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THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 17/6. 

A DISCOURSE 






DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE VIEGINIA ALPHA 

OF THE 

PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY. 

IN THE CHAPEL OF 

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE, 
IN THE CITY OF WILLIAMSBURG, 

ON THE AFTERNOON OF JULY THE 3rd, 1855. 
BY 

HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY. 



[published by a resolution of the society] 



J, W. RANDOLPH, 

121 MAIN STREET, RICHMOND, VA 

1855. 



W. II. CLEMMITT, PRINTER. 



i3 



62 Z39/& 





DISCOURSE 



Mr. President: 

Before I proceed to the subject which I have 
selected for the present occasion, I cannot refrain from expressing 
my grateful acknowledgments to the society in which you preside, 
for the honor of admission into its ranks, and my delight at its 
re-establishment. The PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, insti- 
tuted more than two-thirds of a century ago within the walls of 
William and Mary by some of Virginia's noblest sons, and inter- 
twining itself since with the most eminent colleges of the Union, 
has performed an office of incalculable importance in the history of 
American literature. The names of John Marshall, Bushrod 
Washington, Spencer Roane, John Nivison, the Cabells, the 
Stuarts, Hardy, Page, Cocke, the Bookers, the Shorts, and 
others, who laid its foundations, or Avere among its earliest members, 
deserve to be held in lasting remembrance.* The most eminent 
names in war and peace, throughout the Union, have been sub- 
sequently inscribed upon its rolls. Its annual gatherings constitute 



* The names of the original members of the Phi Be 
lished in Williamsburg on the fifth of December, 1776, 



John Heath, 
Thomas Smith, 
Richard Booker, 
Armistead Smith, 
John Jones, 
John Stuart, 
Daniel Fitzhugh, 
Theodore Fitzhugh, 
John Starke, 
Isaac Hill, 
William Short, 
John Morrison, 
George Braxton, 
Henry Hill, 
John Allen, 



John Nivison, 
Hartwell Cocke, 
Thomas Hall, 
Samuel Hardy, 
Archibald Stuart, 
John Brown, 
D. C. Brent, 
Thomas Clements, 
Thomas W. Ballandine, 
Richard Booker, 
John Moore, 
Spencer Roane, 
William Stith, 
W. Stuart, 
J. J. Beckley, 



ta Kappa Society, estab- 
are as follows : 

Thomas Savage, 
John Page, 
William Cabell^ 
John Marshall, 
Bushrod Washington, 
Thomas Lee, 
Landon Cabell, 
W. Pierce, 
Richard B. Lee, 
William Madison, 
John Swann, 
Thomas Cocke, 
Paxton Bowdoin, 
Alexander Mason. 



4 WILLIAMSBURG — ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 

the great literary jubilee of our country. Sir, I indulge the hope, — 
nay more than hope, — the firm and full belief, that its re-institution 
here, in the place of its birth, appealing, as it does, with irresistible 
power to our love of letters and to our love of country, is an omen 
of cheering import ; that its star shall be obscured no more ; and 
that, as the past generations beheld its genial light, so the genera- 
tions to come will hail its influence sweetly and charmingly blended 
with the radiance of our venerable college, now and henceforth, 
with becoming pride and joy. 

The scene before me suggested the subject to which I invite 
your attention. I was to speak in Williamsburg, the metropolis of 
the Colony, and the cradle of the young Commonwealth. I was to 
address a society instituted by some of the patriot fathers of the 
Republic. I was to speak before a college in which most of those 
patriot fathers were nurtured. I Avas to speak almost within the 
shadow of that sacred edifice in which those fathers so long wor- 
shipped, in which they bowed beneath the chastisements of the 
Ruler of Nations in fasting and prayer, at the altar of which they 
put forth their first and fervent supplications for the prosperity of 
the new Commonwealth which, under the guidance of Providence, 
they had been impelled to erect, and in which they invoked the aid 
of His countenance, who had guided their fathers over the waters, 
who had shielded them amid the dangers of the wilderness, and 
who had blessed them with prosperity and peace, to sustain them 
in the fearful contest in which they were engaged. And, as if the 
glory of that contest were inseparably connected with this ancient 
city in which it may be said to have begun, it was not far from 
hence that the last great battle of the Revolution was fought; it 
was here that the booming of the distant artillery was heard, as the 
red cross of St. George descended to the dust, and the stars of 
America and the lilies of France proclaimed to the distant be- 
holder that the sceptre of Britain was broken at last, and the inde- 
pendence of our beloved country established forever. 

I propose to treat of the Convention of Virginia, which assem- 
bled in the hall of the House of Burgesses in this city on the 6th 
day of May, 1776, and which framed the first Constitution of Vir- 
ginia. If we regard the circumstances under which it assembled, 
the character of the men who composed it, the comprehensive and 
invaluable results which flowed from its action — results affecting 



THE STATE OF THE TIMES. 5 

the destinies not only of this Commonwealth, and of the other 
States of the Union, but the world at large, its importance cannot 
be too highly enhanced. Indeed, such is the grandeur of the sub- 
ject, that I might well shrink from undertaking it, and I truly wish 
it had been assigned to some one of those who are now before me, 
and whose genius and skill would invest it with that drapery which 
would so richly become it. But, confident in the goodness of my 
cause, and in full reliance on the magnanimity of this audience, I 
proceed to discuss it. 

It is proper to recall the state of the times when the Convention 
assembled in this city. For more than ten years previously, the 
Colony had been full of anxiety and excitement. The financial 
embarrassments of England had become pressing, and her states- 
men, having exhausted the resources of domestic taxation, felt 
constrained to look abroad for new subjects of revenue. Hence 
the series of measures which led to the Revolution. It ought not 
to be disguised, that the Colonies, especially Virginia, were at- 
tached to the parent country. Fears were indeed expressed at the 
British Court as early as the days of Charles the Second, that the 
New England Colonies were anxious to assume a republican form 
of government;* but full reliance was always placed on the fidelity 
of Virginia. The northern Colonies, occupying a sterile soil, were 
compelled, in self-defence, to engage in commerce and manufac- 
tures, and totally disregarded from the earliest period the naviga- 
tion laws of Great Britain,! and traded wherever they pleased. 
But Virginia, whose inhabitants were engaged in cultivating a 
genial soil, and whose productions were readily sought by the ships 
of England, had few inducements to embark in a contraband trade, 
and never made any progress in forming a commercial marine of 
her own. Her connexion with England was consequently more 
intimate than that which existed between the New England Colo- 
nies and the parent country. Our population was also more nearly 

* Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, Vol. II., 59. Anno 1671. 

t See Sir William Berkeley's answers to the inquiries of the lords commis- 
sioners of foreign plantations, Heniug, Vol. II., 511, and the Virginia Histori- 
cal Register, Vol. III., 11. I cannot refer to the Register without bearing my 
testimony to the value of its contents, which are almost indispensable to a 
correct knowledge of our history. The precious letters and documents which 
it contains are worth all the leaves of the Sybils. No young Virginian should 
rest satisfied until he obtains a set of its six small volumes neatly bound, which 
may be had of the editor at the historical rooms in Richmond. 



b THE STATE OF THE TIMES. 

assimilated in manners and customs to that of England; for, with 
the exception of a few persons from Ireland, and from France 
during- the troubles which ensued upon the revocation of the edict 
of Nantes, our emigrants were mainly from England and Scotland, 
and cultivated ample freehold estates of their own. Moreover, the 
established religion of England was also the established religion of 
the Colony; and, although perhaps, at no time did it embrace a 
majority of the whole people, it was heartily sustained by those 
who held the reins of colonial authority.* It was the pride of 
the Virginia planters to contemplate the power and glory of the 
mother country. They were descended from a common stock; 
they spoke a common language; they professed the same form of 
public worship; they enjoyed nearly all the benefits of a free gov- 
ernment in the Colony, and were protected by the flag of Britain 
abroad. Some of the most intelligent statesmen of the Colony 
regarded Virginia as occupying the same relation toward the British 
Crown as was borne by Scotland before the union of that country 
with England, and holding the king as the common bond;t a doc- 
trine which would seem to be sustained by the arms of the Colony 
on which were quartered those of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
with the motto, En dot Virginia quartam. Nor was the pride of 
Virginia offended by the connexion. She believed that she gave 
an ample equivalent for the protection of the British flag in the 
profits derived from her commerce ; for she thought that Great 
Britain might well protect that trade which she arrogated exclu- 
sively to herself. But when questions of a local nature were con- 
cerned, Virginia practically repudiated the interference of the 
British parliament. For one hundred and sixty-seven years she 
had levied her own taxes ; and it was her boast that the poorest 
man in her dominion could not be required to pay a tax which had 
not been laid with his own consent given by his immediate repre- 
sentative. When the British ministry sought to disregard this 
principle, it is the glory of Virginia that she led the van in sus- 
taining the common rights of the colonies. Her opposition carried 
with it a peculiar influence, and it was as decided as it Avas pecu- 
liar. The passage of the resolutions of the House of Burgesses in 

* Mr. Jefferson estimated the opponents of the established church at the 
breaking out of the Revolution, at not more than one-half of the people. 

t Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Wythe held this opinion. Jefferson's Works, Vol. I., 6. 



THE DECLARATION OF JULY, 1775. 7 

1765, holding its sessions in this city, against the stamp act, was 
the first great blow which British supremacy received on this side 
of the Atlantic. The historian of America, as he records them on 
his pages, will delight to exhibit them as the first great act of the 
drama of the Revolution. Nor was this measure adopted until the 
usual modes of appeal had been pressed, and pressed in vain. 
Indeed so far "from true was it, that independence was generally 
sought in the beginning of the troubles, that, to pass over proofs, 
the Convention of August, 1774, had met and adjourned; the Con- 
vention of March, of July, and of December, 1775, had also met 
and adjourned, without the expression of a single opinion in favor 
of independence. On the contrary, at the close of the Convention 
of July, 1775, the body published a "Declaration" to the people, 
which concluded with the following explicit statement of their 
views. "Lest our views and designs should be misrepresented or 
misunderstood, we, again and for all, publicly and solemnly declare, 
before God and the world, that we do bear faith and true allegiance 
to his majesty, George the Third, our only lawful and rightful king; 
that we will, so long as it may be in our power, defend him and his 
government, as founded on the laws and well known principles of 
the Constitution; that we will, to the utmost of our pow r er, pre- 
serve peace and order throughout the country ; and endeavor by 
every honorable means to promote a restoration of that friendship 
and amity which so long and happily subsisted between our fellow 
subjects in Great Britain and the inhabitants of America; that as, 
on the one hand, we are determined to defend our lives and pro- 
perties, and maintain our just rights and privileges at every, even 
the extremest hazard, so, on the other, it is our fixed and unaltera- 
ble resolution to disband such forces as may be raised in this Colony 
whenever our dangers are removed, and America is restored to 
that former state of tranquility and happiness, the interruption of 
which is so much deplored by us and every friend to either 
country."* 

* Journal Convention, July, 1775, page 28. Mr. Jefferson in a letter to John 
Randolph, who had gone over with Dunmore, dated August 25, 1775, declares: 
" I am sincerely one of those (who wish for a connexion with England,) and 
would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any 
. nation upon earth, or than on no nation." Works, Vol. I., 151. See also the 
letter of George Mason to Col. Mercer; Virginia Historical Register, Vol. II., 
30 ; and Pendleton's sketch of his own life, in the archives of the Historical 
Society. 



8 THE QUESTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

Although no ulterior object beyond the peace of the Colony was 
sought prior to the time of the assembling of the Convention in 
May, 1776, the people, in self-defence, had taken the government 
into their own hands; for a year had past since Dunmore, the royal 
governor, had withdrawn from this city; and the subject of inde- 
pendence had been discussed in private circles and in letters. The 
conviction was felt by our leading statesmen, that Great Britain 
intended to subdue the colonists at every hazard by force of arms, 
and, as it was plain that no foreign aid could be expected so long as 
the colonies were connected with the mother country, it was 
thought expedient to dissolve that connexion. Hence Richard 
Henry Lee, then in Philadelphia, wrote to Patrick Henry when he 
was about to take his seat in the Convention, exhorting him to pro- 
pose a separation.* It should be observed that the battle of the 
Great Bridge had been fought more than four months before, and 
the military resources of the Colony had been drawn into requisi- 
tion. And on the first day of the January previous, Dunmore had 
applied the torch to the borough of Norfolk, the great seaport of 
the South, and reduced it to ashes. Still, when the election of the 
members of the Convention was held, there had been no formal 
declaration by the people, as has been shown by Mr. Jefferson, of a 
desire to separate from England, and to establish an independent 
system of their own. Nor should it be forgotten, that the various 
non-importation enactments, which could only be defended as mea- 
sures of peace, and which were wholly unwise, and even destruc- 
tive, if reference were had to a war with England, remained in 
full force. Such was the state of things when the Convention 
assembled in the hall of the House of Burgesses in this city, on 
the sixth day of May, 1776-t 

* I first saw this patriotic letter in December last, among the Henry papers 
at Red Hill, the seat of John Henry, Esq., the youngest son of Patrick Henry, 
where the great orator lived and died, and where his remains now repose. After 
a slight allusion to a letter which he had previously written, Lee begins : 
"Ages yet unborn, and millions existing at present, may rue or bless that 
assembly on which their happiness or misery will so eminently depend." The 
letter is dated April 20, 177(i, and was unknown to the grandson of Lee, who 
wrote his life. I confess my obligations to Mr. Henry lor the liberality witli 
which he showed me all the papers of his father in his possession, and for his 
generous hospitality which I have so frequently enjoyed. 

f As it is common to confound the House of Burgesses with the Conventions, 
the former of which bodies was elected by writs issued by the royal governor, 
and the latter by the act of the people themselves, it is proper to state than on 
the day of the meeting of the Convention, " forty-five members of the House 



MEETING OF THE CONVENTION. 9 

The crowd which filled the Capitol evinced the intensity of the 
public excitement. The most influential men from the neighboring 
counties, not then in office, had sought the city, and repaired early 
to the place of meeting. Mothers and daughters were to be seen 
in the hall and in the gallery, watching with deep interest a scene 
which was to affect their own peace and happiness, and the peace 
and happiness of those who were dear to them. They were 
anxious to behold the beginnings of that plan of government which 
was to be sustained by the wisdom and valor of their husbands, 
brothers, and sons, and in the maintenance of which they were ere 
long to be called upon to bestow, as a tribute to the treasury of 
their bleeding country, the jewels which in a happier hour had 
sparkled in the bridal wreath, or had reflected the purity of the 
bosoms which bounded beneath them. 

We may readily imagine the feelings with which the members 
themselves took their seats in that ancient hall. Many of them 
had sat in the House of Burgesses for a long series of years, and 
had often heard with pride the words of the British king spoken by 
his representative. Thirty years before, that hall had resounded 
with the congratulations of the Burgesses, when the victory of 
Culloden had sealed the fate of the Stuarts, and fixed firmly on the 
British throne that Hanoverian dynasty which they were soon to 
shake- off.* And seventeen years before, some of the members 
then present had raised the voice of thanksgiving when Wolfe on 
the Heights of Abraham had crushed the power of France, whose 
aid they were shortly to invoke. How different was the prospect 
before them ! The sceptre of British rule was now to be broken, 
and forever. Yet there were emotions of a tender kind which 
agitated their bosoms. When last they assembled in full session in 
that hall, the manly form of Peyton Randolph had filled the chair. 
His elegant person, his imposing address, the high place which 
he held in his profession and in the public esteem, the ability and 
dignity with which he had filled, for the past ten years, the chair of 

of Burgesses met at the Capitol in this city ; but thinking that the people 
could not be legally represented under the ancient constitution, which had been 
subverted by the king, lords, and commons, they unanimously dissolved them- 
selves accordingly." See the Virginia Gazette of that date in the library of 
Virginia. 

* The House of Burgesses called the first county created after the battle of 
Culloden, in honor of the Duke of Cumberland. 



10 PEYTON RANDOLPH. 

the House of Burgesses, were freshly remembered ; while the tem- 
pered zeal with which he engaged in the contest in which the 
country was now embarked, and which concentred on himself the 
confidence of all parties, his honored and patriotic career in the 
General Congress in which he was unanimously called to preside, 
the wisdom and firmness which he displayed in the Conventions of 
March and July, 1775, in both of which he presided, the resolution 
with which he persisted in the public service in spite of feeble 
health, and which elicited from the Convention of July a mark of 
acknowledgment as rare as it was delicate and becoming,* all 
heightened and softened by the recollection of his sudden death a 
short time before in a distant city, while engaged in the service of 
his country; falling, too, at a crisis when his peculiar caste of 
character and admirable talents were so much needed by his com- 
patriots, appealed with overpowering force to every heart. Although 
averse from precipitate action even in a good cause, and not indis- 
posed to discountenance the strong measures which were urged by 
younger statesmen, he yet enjoyed the unlimited confidence of the 
two great parties, which had for some years past been gradually 
assuming a distinct form, and had always been elected to the promi- 
nent offices which he held by an almost unanimous vote. His 
career had been a remarkable one. As early as 1748, ere he 
had attained his twenty-fifth year, he was appointed Attorney 
General, and performed faithfully the duties of the office until 
1766, when he succeeded on the death of Speaker Robinson to the 
chair of the House of Burgesses, of which he had long been a 
member, and was successively elected to that high station until the 
body was superseded by the Conventions of the people. Of the 
first Virginia Convention which was held in August, 1774, in this 
city, he was unanimously elected President.! He was at the head 
of the Committee of Correspondence. His name stood first on the 
roll of delegates appointed by that body to the General Congress, 

* Journal Convention, July, 1775, page 18. The Convention invites him by 
a resolution to retire from the chair, that he might recruit himself for the labors 
of the approaching Congress, of which he was President. 

1 1 regret that I cannot put my finger upon the list of the members of the 
Convention of August, 1774, A list of the twenty-five members of the Honse 
of Burgesses who met in this city and convoked the Convention, may be found 
in Purviance's, "Baltimore during the Revolution," page 135, and a sketch of 
the doings of the Convention itself may also be seen in the same work, pa?e 
169. J r 6 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 11 

above that of a Washington, a Harrison, a Bland, a Pendleton, and 
a Henry. And when the Congress assembled, he was unanimously 
elected its President. Although he may be said to have died early, 
as he was in his fifty-second year only, when in October, 1775, he 
was stricken with apoplexy, he had been nearly thirty years in the 
public service. la person he was tall and stately, of a grave de- 
meanor, and was more distinguished, as a lawyer, by the soundness 
of his learning and his accuracy of research, than by the elegance 
of his language or by the mere graces of delivery. Sprung from a 
family, whose wealth, accumulated by an industrious but unculti- 
vated ancestor who had emigrated to the Colony about the close of 
the previous century, had been wisely expended in the education 
of its members, who successively for a long series of years attained 
to the highest honors of the Colony, he superadded to his really 
great qualities the prestige of a name ; so, that he was one of those 
fortunate men, who from considerations accidental as well as in- 
trinsic, become honors, and whom honors become. Even the 
unfortunate adhesion of his brother to the royal cause — an attach- 
ment which led him to forsake his native country, and to spend the 
short and sad remnant of his life among her enemies — and which 
would have cast suspicion over ordinary men, tended by the force 
of contrast rather to elevate than depress him in the estimation of 
the people. Men of William and Mary! he was peculiarly your 
own. It was in this city that he was born. It was at the breast of 
your venerable parent he drew his early nurture, and it was from 
her lips he learned those lessons of patriotism and piety, which 
have encircled his name with unfading honor. It was, in later life, 
as the immediate representative of your interests in the House of 
Burgesses, that he founded some of his highest claims to the grati- 
tude of his country. And it is within the precincts of this sanc- 
tuary, beneath the platform on which I stand, and by the side of 
his father, whose marble tablet, placed more than a century ago on 
that wall, looks down on the graves of his race, that his honored 
ashes now repose.* As I behold that spot, a mournful vision rises 

* The Virginia Gazette of the 29th of November, 1776, says : " On Tuesday- 
last the remains of our amiable and beloved fellow-citizen, the Hon. Peyton 
Randolph, Esq., were conveyed in a hearse to the College Chapel, attended by 
the worshipful brotherhood of Free Masons, both houses of Assembly, a num- 
ber of other gentlemen, and the inhabitants of the city. The body was received 
from the hearse by six gentlemen of the House of Delegates, who conveyed it 
to the family vault in the Chapel ; after which an excellent oration was pro- 



12 JOHN TAZEWELL ELECTED CLERK. 

before me. A few rapid years have passed since the burial of 
Peyton Randolph, and these boards were again displaced. In a 
fresh grave were slowly lowered in silence and in sadness the 
mortal remains of a man who was the boast of this college and the 
pride of Virginia, who had worthily worn the highest legal honors 
of the Colony, who had forsaken his country in the hour of her 
trial, and who had paid in a foreign land the penalty of a broken 
heart. John Randolph, the son of that Sir John, whose marble 
image has so long adorned your hall, separated in the convulsions 
of a great crisis from his patriot brother, then rested once more by 
his side. 

When the time arrived for calling the Convention to order, a 
member rose in his place and proposed John Tazewell as. its 
clerk. This eminent aad excellent man had been conspicuous in 
the preparatory movements which led to the call of the several 
Conventions, and had been a member of the memorable association 
of 1770. He studied at William and Mary, was bred to the law 
which he prosecuted with success, and subsequently under the con- 
stitution he was elected a judge of the General Court. On the 
assembling of the second Convention in Richmond, in March, 1775, 
he had been unanimously elected clerk, and filled with fidelity a 
station which was second only in dignity and influence to that of 
the speaker, and which a Wythe before and an Edmund Randolph 
afterwards deemed not unworthy of their ambition. He was also 
elected clerk of the Conventions of July and December of the 
same year.* When the clerk had taken his seat, the election of a 
presiding officer came up in course. Heretofore in the appoint- 
ment to public office there had been, since the beginning of the 
troubles, entire unanimity in the Colony. Peyton Randolph had 
always been elected to the chair of the House of Burgesses and of 
the Convention of which he was a member, by an unanimous 

nounced from the pulpit by the Rev, Thomas Davis, in honor of the deceased, 
and recommending it to the respectable audience to imitate his virtues. The 
oration being ended, the body was deposited in the vault, when every spectator 
paid the last tribute of tears to the memory of their departed and much honored 
friend. The remains were brought from Philadelphia by his nephew, Edmund. 
Randolph, in pursuance of the orders of the widow." 

* Judge John Tazewell died in Williamsburg, I am informed, in 1781, and 
was buried in the church yard of that city. No stone marks his grave — a re- 
mark which applies to most of the graves of our early statesmen. 



ELECTION OF SPEAKER, 13 

vote;* and Robert Carter Nicholas, who succeeded him pro tempore 
in the Convention of July, 1775, Avas also elected unanimously. 
The election of Edmund Pendleton to the chair in the Convention 
of the previous December, was also unanimous. 

But a new feeling had been recently roused in the Colony. An 
incident, which created much unpleasant excitement, and which 
threatened at one period serious consequences to the army, had 
recently occurred. The great orator of the Revolution, who had 
been appointed by the Convention of July, 1775, to the command 
of the military forces of the Colony, and who was anxious to lead 
his countrymen to the field, had been virtually superseded by the 
Committee of Safety. Of this committee, Pendleton was the head, 
and was held responsible for its action. It was believed that if the 
party of which Henry, who was a memher of the House, was the 
representative, should unite upon a candidate of their own for the 
office of President, Pendleton, who was a candidate for re-nomina- 
tion, would lose the election. Under these circumstances, Richard 
Bland rose to address the House. His grey hairs, which were to 
him truly a crown of honor, his tall and manly form slightly bowed 
beneath the weight of years, his striking and even handsome, face, 
which is still to be seen in his portrait at Jordan's, mutilated though 
it be by the bayonet of a British vandal, his bright blue eyes, now 
weak with age, and protected by a green shade, his distinguished 
position as a leader and member of the House of Burgesses for 
nearly the third of a century, and his brilliant reputation as the 
ablest writer in the Colony, might well make an impression even 
on that august assembly. He proposed the name of Pendleton, 
and resumed his seat. Archibald Cary, of whom we shall pre- 
sently speak, seconded the motion. Up to this moment, although 
much dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Committee of Safety 
had been expressed privately and in print, it was not certainly 
known that there would be a formal contest for the chair. But all 
doubt was instantly dispelled when Johnson of Louisa appeared on 
the floor. The county from which he came, the very name which 
he bore, settled the question. It was the county of Louisa which 

* When Peyton Randolph was first nominated in 1766, to fill the vacancy in 
the Speaker's chair made by the death of Col. Robinson, R. H. Lee nominated 
Col. Richard Bland in opposition ; but his subsequent elections were unanimous. 
See Journal House of Burgesses, of November 6th, 1766. 



14 EDMUND PENDLETON. 

Henry represented when be offered his resolutions against the 
stamp act. It was a Johnson who had resigned his seat in the 
House of Burgesses, that Henry might succeed him.* Of all the 
opponents of the party of Pendleton for the past ten years, the 
Johnsons were the most ardent and uncompromising. They were 
men of a fierce temperament, and were utterly fearless in the ex- 
pression of their opinions.! As a personal friend of Henry, 
Thomas Johnson felt acutely the indignity with which it was urged 
he had been treated by the Committee of Safety, and he was un- 
willing that Pendleton, whom he held bound for the action of the 
committee, and who was then at its head, should so soon receive so 
signal a mark of the public favor. He proposed Thomas Ludwell 
Lee for the chair, and was sustained by Bartholomew Dandridge. 
But here, as throughout a life protracted far beyond the limit of 
the Psalmist, and spent to its latest hour in the public service, the 
fortunate star of Pendleton prevailed.! He was re-elected, and 
escorted by Richard Bland and Archibald Cary, was led to the 
chair. Nor could the honor of the presiding office have been con- 
ferred more wisely. How far his reputation was involved in the 
difficulty with Henry, will be presently discussed. As a parlia- 
mentarian, he had no equal in the House; a superior nowhere. He 
had been a leading member of the House of Burgesses for five and 
twenty years, was familiar with all its forms, and was admirably 
skilled in the dispatch of its business. If his knowledge of our 
early charters did not equal that of Bland, it was more than respec- 
table, and with the British statutes bearing upon the Colony, and 
with the acts of Assembly, he was fully conversant. And in an 
intellectual point of view, as one of the most accomplished speak- 
ers of the House, he imparted honor to the chair. Nor were his 

* The Journals of the House of Burgesses for the session of 1765, spell the 
name Johnston, but I am inclined to believe that the name is Johnson. Mr. 
Wirt says that Johnston resigned to give place to Henry, while the Journal 
states that be vacated his seat in consequence of accepting the office of coro- 
ner. Journal House of Burgesses, 1765, page 99. 

j An incident will illustrate the character of one of the Johnsons. He had 
uttered an oath in debate in the House of Burgesses, which was promptly fol- 
lowed by an order that the offender should receive the reprimand of the Speaker, 
which that officer pronounced on the spot in due form. As soon as he ended, 
Johnson, who had risen to receive the reprimand, set up a loud whistle, which 
brought down the house in a roar of laughter, and converted the whole affair 
into a farce. 

% The Journal gives the result, but does not state the vote. 



ELECTION OP CHAPLAIN. 15 

physical qualities at all inferior to his intellectual. He was fully 
six feet in height, and was in the vigor of life, having reached his 
fifty-fifth year ; his face still so comely as to have won for its pos- 
sessor the reputation of being the handsomest man in the Colony ; 
his noble form yet unbent by that fearful accident which, in less 
than twelve months, was to consign him to the crutch for life ; lithe 
and graceful in all his movements; his manners polished by an 
intercourse of a quarter of a century with the most refined circles 
of the metropolis and of the Colony; his voice clear and ringing, 
so that its lowest note was heard distinctly throughout the hall; and 
a self-possession so supreme as to sustain him in the fiercest col- 
lisions of debate as if in a state of repose. Of such a man it may 
be safely said, that in whatever view we choose to regard him, and 
whether we look abroad or at home, a more accomplished personage 
has rarely presided in a public assembly. 

Before taking his seat, Pendleton made his acknowledgments to 
the house in a few plain sentences, which have come down to us, 
and which, simple as they seem, eminently display his skill as a 
politician. The adroitness with which he regarded his election as a 
fresh mark of the public confidence, the scrupulous care with which 
he kept out of sight the subject of independence, which he well knew 
the party of Henry intended to bring forward, and the zeal with 
which he pressed the topics which in a state of flagrant war de- 
manded the immediate attention of the house, were as keenly felt 
by his opponents as they were applauded by his friends.* 

It is gratifying to observe, that one of the first acts of the Con- 
vention was the appointment of a chaplain, whose duty it was to 
open its sessions with prayer. And on the second day of the 
meeting, the chaplain, the Rev. Thomas Price, was requested to 
preach a suitable discourse in the Episcopal church in this city, on 
the Friday week following, in compliance with the resolution of the 
Congress, which had set apart that day as a time of fasting and 
prayer throughout the Colonies. Nor was the observance of so 
grave a religious ceremony a mere matter of form. Some of the 
few letters of the patriots of that day, which have come down to us, 
and which, if not worth all the classics, are invaluable for the pur- 
poses of history, show the spirit in which such days were kept. 

* Journal Virginia Convention, May, 1776, page 5. 



16 DUTIES OF THE CONVENTION. 

The members not only attended in person, clad in mourning, and 
marching in procession to the church, preceded by the sergeant of 
arms bearing the ancient mace in his hand, but required their fami- 
lies at home to follow their example.* 

It would be unjust to overlook the diligence with which these 
eminent men performed their public duties. The house was opened 
first at nine in the morning, and afterwards at seven, when the 
chaplain read prayers. The letter of a member of the Convention, 
who was also a member of a previous one, affords us a glimpse of 
the daily routine. "The committees met at seven, and remained 
in session until the hour of nine, when the Convention assembled, 
which rarely adjourned until five in the afternoon. After dinner 
and a little refreshment, the committees sit again until nine or ten 
at night." t The writer speaks of the difficulties that beset the 
members: difficulties, indeed, but from which, great as they were, 
those noble patriots did not shrink, but with which they manfully 
grappled, and which, under the guidance of a kind Providence, they 
overcame, crowning their work with that independence which they 
were about to declare, and with that happy plan of government 
which they were now about to establish. 

Let it be kept in mind, that the Convention not only performed 
the ordinary duties of the legislative department, but, while in 
session, those of the executive also. Thus it received and answered 
the letters of the highest military officers in the public service, and 
the letters of the members of Congress. Hence, from the extreme 
pressure of business mostly of an executive kind ; for it must be 
remembered that Dunmore was still on our waters, and that it was 
not till several days after the adjournment of the Convention, that 
he was driven from his retreat at Gwin's Island by the artillery of 
the gallant Lewis ; it was not until the fifteenth day of May, after 
long and solemn deliberation in committee of the whole, that two 
resolutions, which were in every view the most important ever 
presented for the consideration of a public body, were reported to 
the house, and unanimously adopted. As these resolves have been 

* A letter of George Mason, written on the occasion of a fast, and recently 
brought to light, enjoins it upon his household that they should attend the ser- 
vices in the church near Gunston Hall, and that his three sons and two daugh- 
ters should appear in mourning'. Mason to Cockburn, Virginia Historical Reg- 
ister, Vol. lit., 28. 

t Virginia Historical Register, Vol. II., 23. 



RESOLUTIONS PROPOSING INDEPENDENCE Vj 

rarely drawn from the journals in full, and recorded in the histories 
of the period, and as they constitute the first declaration of inde- 
pendence, I quote them at large : 

"Forasmuch as all the endeavors of the United Colonies by the 
most decent representations and petitions to the king and parliament 
of Great Britain, to restore peace and security to America under 
the British government, and a re-union with that people upon jus* 
and liberal terms, instead of a redress of grievances, have pro- 
duced, from an imperious and vindictive administration, increased 
insult, oppression, and a vigorous attempt to effect our total de- 
struction. By a late act, all these Colonies are declared to be in 
rebellion, and out of the protection of the British crown, our pro- 
perties subjected to confiscation, our people, when captivated, com- 
pelled to join in the murder and plunder of their relations and 
countrymen, and all former rapine and oppression of Americans 
declared legal and just. Fleets and armies are raised, and the aid 
of foreign troops engaged to assist these destructive purposes. The 
king's representative in this Colony hath not only withheld all the 
powers of government from operating for our safety, but, having 
retired on board an armed ship, is carrying on a piratical and 
savage war against us, tempting our slaves, by every artifice, to 
resort to him, and training and employing them against their mas- 
ters. In this state of extreme danger, we have no alternative left 
but an abject submission to the will of those overbearing t} r rants, 
or a total separation from the crown and government of Great 
Britain, uniting and exerting the strength of all America for defence, 
and forming alliances with foreign powers for commerce and aid in 
war. Wherefore, appealing to the SEARCHER OF HEARTS for 
the sincerity of former declarations expressing our desire to pre- 
serve the connexion with that nation, and that we are driven from 
that inclination by their wicked councils, and the eternal laws of 
self-preservation : 

" Resolved, unanimously, That the delegates appointed to represent 
this Colony in the General Congress, be instructed to propose to 
that respectable body, to declare the United Colonies free and inde- 
pendent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, 
the crown or parliament of Great Britain ; and that they give the 
assent of this Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures 
may be thought proper and necessary by the Congress for forming 



18 AND A PLAN OF GOVERNMENT. 

foreign alliances, and a confederation of the colonies, at such time 
and in the manner as to them shall seem best; Provided, the power 
of forming government for, and the regulations of the internal con- 
cerns of each Colony, be left to the respective colonial legislatures. 

"Resolved, unanimously, That a committee be appointed to prepare 
a Declaration of Rights, and such a plan of government as will 
be most likely to maintain peace and order in this Colony, and 
secure substantial and equal liberty to the people."* 

The subsequent history of the first resolution, which instructs 
the delegates of Virginia in Congress to propose independence, is 
known to all. The proposition was made in Congress in nearly the 
words of the resolution, by Richard Henry Lee, who was gallantly 
upheld by John Adams, whose eloquence and unfaltering courage, 
as they were the admiration of his own age, so they will be cher- 
ished in all time to come. The Declaration of the Fourth of July 
followed in due time ; and it may be recorded as a fortunate inci- 
dent in our history, that, in a contest sustained with equal zeal hy 
the chivalric men of all the colonies, she was the first to instruct 
her delegates to declare independence, that the declaratory resolu- 
tion adopted by Congress was drawn and offered by one of her rep- 
resentatives, and that the public appeal to the nations of the earth 
in the form of a declaration of independence, was drafted by 
another. 

It is becoming to observe that, when the resolution instructing 
the delegates in Congress to propose independence was adopted by 
the Convention, the result was welcomed by the people of Wil- 
liamsburg with every demonstration of joy. Thus, amid the ring- 
ing of bells and the thunder of artillery, the jocund shouts of the 
young and the cordial congratulations of the old, the kingdom 
passed away, and independence was assumed.! While this ani- 
mated scene was enacting without, the eye of the reflecting ob- 
server beheld in the Convention an eloquent remembrancer of the 

* Journal of the Convention 1776, page 15. In a letter to R. H. Lee, dated 
May 18, 1776, in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society, Geo. Mason 
criticises with some sharpness the wording of the preamble. 

t The Virginia Gazette of the 17th of May, 1776, gives an animatad account 
of the rejoicings. The resolution was read to the army in the presence of 
Gen. Andrew Lewis, who, a few days later, was to drive Dunmore ignomini- 
ously from our waters, the Committee of Safety, the members of the Conven- 
tion, and the people at large ; and a feast was spread for the soldiers in Waller's 
grove. At night the city was brilliantly illuminated. 



THE DECLARATION OF RIGHTS REPORTED. 19 

past. The ancient silver mace, once the superb and princely 
symbol of imperial power, now the trophy of a people resolved to 
be free, rested on the table of the clerk. 

It has been seen that at the same time the Convention instructed 
the delegates in Congress to propose independence, it adopted a 
resolution appointing a committee to frame a declaration of rights, 
and a plan of government for the State. Accordingly a committee 
consisting of over thirty members most distinguished for their wis- 
dom and ability, Archibald Cary at their head, was appointed by 
the chair;* and on the twenty-seventh of May, Mr. Cary reported 
to the house a Declaration of Rights, "which he read in his place, 
and afterwards delivered in at the clerk's table, when the same was 
a°;ain read, and ordered to be committed to a committee of the 
whole Convention." From the twenty-seventh of May to the eleventh 
of June, the Declaration of Rights was discussed at intervals in 
committee of the whole ; and on the latter day it was ordered that 
the declaration with the amendments be fairly transcribed, and 
read a third time ; and the day after, the fifteenth of June, it was 
passed unanimously. And on the twenty-fourth of June, Mr. Cary 
reported a " plan of government," which was read the first time, 
and ordered to be read a second time. It was passed over on the 
twenty-fifth, discussed on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, 
and on the twenty-eighth was reported with amendments to the 
house, and ordered to be read a third time ; and on the twenty- 
ninth or june, the first written constitution ever framed by an 
independent political society, was adopted by an unanimous vote. 

And here, let me add. it is in the spirit of just exultation that 
William and Mary may contemplate the fact, that the statesman 
who was probably the author of the Virginia declaration of inde- 
pendence, from whose lips the declaration of rights was first heard 
in a public assembly, and who reported the first written constitu- 
tion of a sovereign state known among men ;t and that the states- 

* The committee consisted of the following gentlemen : Mr. A. Cary, Mr. 
Meriwether Smith, Mr. Mercer, Mr. Henry Lee, Mr. Treasurer, (R. C. Nicho- 
las,) Mr. Henry, Mr. Dandridge, Mr. Gilmer, Mr. Richard Bland, Mr. Digges, 
Mr. Paul Carrington, Mr. Thomas Ludwell Lee, Mr. Cabell, Mr. Jones," Mr. 
Blair, Mr. Fleming, Mr. Henry Tazewell, Mr. R. Cary, Mr. Bullitt, Mr. Watts, 
Mr. Banister, Mr. Page, Mr. Starke, Mr. David Mason, Mr. Adams, Mr. Read, 
and Mr. Thomas Lewis. And at a later day, as they arrived in the city, Mi. 
Madison, Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Benjamin Watkins, Mr. George Mason, Mr. 
Harvie, Mr. Curie, and Mr. Holt. 

1 1 attribute the preamble to the resolutions proposing independence and the 



20 VIRGINIA THE FIRST STATE TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE. 

man who drafted the eloquent preamble of that constitution, and 
the immortal charter of our liberties, the American declaration of 
independence, were among her cherished sons. 

As the claim of Virginia to the honor of having first declared 
independence, has been recently disputed, it is our duty, assembled 
as we are, in the very city where that declaration was made, to see 
how the case stands, and to defend her fair fame from any unjust 
pretension, come it from any quarter it may. On the fifteenth of 
May, 1776, she formally instructed her delegates in Congress to 
propose independence, and on the twenty-ninth of June, she 
declared in the most solemn manner on the preamble of her con- 
stitution, that the ties which had previously bound her to the 
British crown, were thenceforth dissolved. But it has been urged 
that the people of the county of Mecklenburg in our sister State of 
North Carolina, made a regular declaration of independence on the 
twentieth of May of the preceding year, thus anticipating the 
action of Virginia by a twelve month. All honor to the patriots of 
Mecklenburg ! The names of her Alexanders, of Brevard, of Polk, 
of Balch, of Kennon, and of others, deserve to be held in grateful 
remembrance. Nor were the gallant sons of Carolina content with 
words. Before the close of that very year they rushed to the de- 
fence of Virginia, who was suffering from the piratical warfare of 
Dunmore, and joining Woodford after the handsome affair of the 
Great Bridge, marched in triumph to Norfolk, where the combined 
forces under the Carolinian Howe, taught Dunmore a lesson which 
he did not soon forget. A resolution adopted by our Convention of 
1775-6, will proclaim to future times the high sense entertained by 
that body of the services of the gallant Carolinians.* But, Mr. 
President, while I rejoice to acknowledge the patriotism and valor 
of North Carolina, displayed then and since on our own soil, and 
while I shall concede, for the present at least, that the good people 
of Mecklenburg did adopt on the twentieth of May, 1775, certain 
resolutions which reflect the highest credit upon them; still I must 
be permitted to doubt whether those resolutions contained, as 
alledged, a declaration of a formal and absolute independence of 

formation of a plan of government to Archibald Cary, from internal evidence. 
Neither R. H. Lee nor Mason had then arrived; and as Cary was chairman of 
the committee, it is probable that, if he be not the sole author, he gave it its 
present shape. 

* Journal Virginia Convention of 1775-6, pages 74 and 81. 



THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 21 

the British crown. That the people overturned the royal govern- 
ment in their county, that they denounced every man a traitor who 
should hold or accept a commission from the king, that they drew 
up some regulations for their temporary government, and that the}' 
acted independence, if they did not formally declare it, I am quite 
willing for the present to concede ; but I must confess that all the 
evidence yet accessible by me, does not quite convince me that 
there was a regular declaration.* It is true that the resolutions 
purporting to have been then and there adopted, do make such a 
declaration ; but I am inclined to think that there has been some 
mistake in the case, which I shall proceed to surmise. You will 
see at once, sir, that if the original manuscript or a printed contem- 
poraneous copy could be produced, the question would be settled at 
once. But unfortunately no such copy can be found, and we are 
referred to two copies, one of which is supposed to be more genu- 
ine than the other, is generally put forth as the true copy, which 
was discovered among the papers of one of Carolina's most distin- 
guished sons, the late Gen. Davie, and which is now said to be on 
file in the state department at Raleigh ; and the other copy, which 
is the first printed one known to exist, is contained in the history of 
North Carolina by Martin, who was once governor of that State. 
Now, sir, apart from the changes in the tenses of verbs, such as 
"abets" in one copy and "abetted" in the other, there are in the 
first short resolution of each copy nine words that are not in both ; 
and in the Davie copy of the first resolution, we find the insertion 
of the ominous words "inherent and inalienable," which have made 
the foundation in part of the charge of plagiarism against Mr. Jef- 
ferson, and which do not appear at all in the Martin copy which, as 
before observed, was the first that appeared in print. The first 
resolution of the Davie copy contains forty-five words ; the same 
resolution in that of Martin, forty only, showing a difference of one- 
eighth of all the words in the resolution. In the second, there are 
in the Davie copy sixty-two words ; in that of Martin fifty-seven, 
and there are ten words, or more than one-sixth of the whole, that 
do not appear in both resolutions. In the third, there are in the 

* The subject of the Mecklenburg declaration has lately been discussed with 
great ability by the Rev. Dr. Hawks, in a lecture delivered before the Historical 
Society of New York. This lecture has been published in book form, with the 
discourses of Governor Swain and Mr. Graham on North Carolina history, by 
Mr. Cooke of Raleigh, 1853. 



22 THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 

Davie copy sixty-seven words ; in that of Martin fifty-eight only ; 
and there are six words not to be found in both copies. In the 
fourth, there are in the Davie copy fifty-eight words ; and in that of 
Martin thirty-six only ; but, though the substance of the resolution 
is the same, the words are almost wholly different. In the fifth, 
there are in the Davie copy one hundred and nine words, and in 
that of Martin eighty-five only; and, though on the same subject, 
they differ almost entirely in their phraseology. A sixth resolution, 
which requires the proceedings of the meeting to be sent "to the 
Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, to be laid before 
that body," and which would point out a source to which we might 
refer for a contemporaneous copy, appears in the Martin copy, but 
is absent from the more graphic copy of Davie. 

Now I am free to confess that the substance of the two series of 
resolutions is the same in both copies ; but the remarkable fact to 
which I would call attention is, that it is palpable not only that 
neither series was copied from the other, hut that the copies from 
which they were taken must also have differed as widely from each 
other, and thus we go back to almost to the date of the resolutions 
themselves ; for it is admitted that the Martin copy was obtained 
prior to 1800, and it is urged by the friends of the resolutions, that 
the Davie copy was in existence as early as 1793. So there is a 
point of time eighteen years only after their date, when the dif- 
ferent copies clashed precisely as they do now. What, Mr. Presi- 
dent, is the plain inference from such a state of facts ? Why, sir, 
that both cannot be true copies of the original ; and that, when we 
consider the early clashing of the copies, that neither is a true copy. 
If I were allowed to form an hypothesis in such a case, it would be 
that the original was probably destroyed or lost at or near its date ; 
that, as time drew on, and the clouds of war rolled over — when the 
fame of the great American declaration was diffused abroad, and its 
phrases had become stereotyped in the common mind, public atten- 
tion was drawn to the proceedings of the Mecklenburg meeting of the 
twentieth of May, and that an effort was made to supply the lost 
document from the memoranda or the recollections of those who were 
present at the meeting; and, as they brought to the task a perfect 
familiarity with the phrases of the great declaration, so they un- 
consciously adopted them in their paper ; and hence the resem- 
blance in certain forms of expression to that instrument. Nor do 



THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 23 

I impute fraud or collusion among the parties. On the contrary, 
they may have been so fully convinced that they had succeeded in 
restoring the original document that, in the lapse of time, the fact 
of its loss was forgotten altogether, and one or other of the existing 
copies was regarded as such. 

But I may be asked what can I say of the fourteen* witnesses 
residing in different states, who testify some forty or fifty years 
after the date of the meeting, that there was a formal declaration of 
independence. I answer at once that I believe them to be true and 
honest patriots, who have served their country in their day and 
generation, and whose lightest lock I would not lift irreverently 
from their honored temples for all the vexed questions in political 
history. And when they testify to a fact which is a legitimate 
subject of parole testimony, I would believe them as soon as any 
other fourteen men on the face of the earth. Thus, when some of 
them declare that there was a public meeting held in the county of 
Jvfecklenburg, on the twentieth of May, 1775, though I might be 
able to show from other sources that it was the thirtieth instead of 
the twentieth on which the meeting was held, I admit at once that 
they declare what they believe to be true, and that their testimony, 
though not conclusive as to the day of the meeting, would seem to 
be conclusive that there was a meeting about that time; but, when 
they testify on the strength of mere memory, after the lapse of 
almost half a century, concerning the peculiar phraseology of a 
series of abstract resolutions which they had heard read from the 
steps of a court-house, and which they never saw in print, and 
which indeed were not printed for years after their date ; and when 
it is considered that those who obtained their affidavits, honorable 
and conscientious men as I concede them to be, regarded their tes- 
timony as deciding a question in which family and state pride was 
enlisted ; and when, so far as I know, no one who doubted the au- 
thenticity of the resolutions was present to freshen the recollections 
of these old men; the case is altered, and I apply strictly to their 
testimony the same rule applicable to human testimony under such 
circumstances. Now, I assert that such testimony cannot be con- 
clusive. Those venerable/ men might well remember that at a 
given period resolut'ons were offered, which struck down the royal 

* Dr. Hawks' Discourse. 



24 THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 

government, and established an independent system in its stead, 
which organized the military forces of the county of Mecklenburg, 
and which denounced vengeance on all who upheld the authority of 
the king ; and that the people were ready to maintain the new sys- 
tem, if need be, with their lives. I say that these aged patriots 
might well remember that the people acted independence, whether 
they used the form of a declaration or not, and put forth their reso- 
lutions of a corresponding tenor; and hence they called the change 
a declaration of independence, which indeed it was, but only as 
the action of all the states at that time may be said to have de- 
clared independence. At the date of the Mecklenburg meeting, 
Virginia was practically as much a self-governing and independent 
state as she now is. The Convention of August, 1774, had met 
and adjourned. The Convention of March, 1775, had met, had 
organized the military forces of the Colony, beside making other 
preparations for the approaching crisis, and had adjourned. These 
aged men might readily have confounded such revolutionary pro- 
ceedings with a formal declaration of independence of the British 
crown. At all events, none holds the honor of these worthy wit- 
nesses in higher repute than I do. 

But, let me ask, why were not these famous resolves printed ? 
The proceedings of the same committee which is said to have 
framed them, adopted ten days after, were duly emblazoned through 
the northern and southern press, and a printed copy of them, by 
the way, was enclosed by the royal governor in a letter, which Mr. 
Sparks recently saw, to the state department in England. It is 
urged that the resolutions of the twentieth were too violent for 
publication ; but the resolves of the thirtieth were printed, which 
embraced an entire plan of government, and contained the dis- 
tilled essence of treason, the punishment of which was death; and, 
as no greater punishment than death can be inflicted upon the same 
persons, it is not easy to tell why one set of resolutions, which may 
be said to be primary and authoritative, should not be published as 
well as the other which followed as a matter of course. Well, sir, 
the resolutions of the twentieth were ordered by the meeting, 
according to one of the copies, to be laid before Congress, and it is 
in testimony that the messenger who is said to have carried them 
to Philadelphia, and who, by the way, did not set out, it would 
seem, until after the thirtieth of May, and took with him the pro- 



THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 25 

ceedings of that day, deposited them, as he states, in the hands of 
the Carolina members. Why were they not reported to Congress, 
and spread upon the journals? There would be no danger from 
such a publication, as Congress always sat with closed doors ; and 
surely a body which was busily engaged in subverting the royal 
authority by armies in the open field, had nerves strong enough to 
bear the resolves of the people of the county of Mecklenburg. 
Why were they not shown to Mr. Jefferson or to John Adams, both 
of whom declare that they never heard of them until almost half a 
century after their date ? If the miserable charge of plagiarism 
urged against Mr. Jefferson may lead the fanatic to undervalue his 
testimony, surely that of John Adams, the Colossus of indepen- 
dence, is unimpeachable. 

I have argued thus far, Mr. President, against the authenticity of 
the Mecklenburg declaration of the twentieth of May, on the 
ground of the clashing between the two copies which have come 
down to us, of the incompetency of witnesses after a lapse of near 
half a century to prove any precise words in a series of resolves 
which they had never seen in print, and which they had merely heard 
read at a public meeting, and on other considerations. I now take 
the position that it is not only not true that a formal declaration of 
independence was made at the time and place aforesaid, but that it 
is impossible to be true. Fortunately for the cause of sober his- 
tory, the same body of men who are reputed to have made the 
Mecklenburg declaration of an absolute independence of the British 
crown on the twentieth of May, 1775, prepared an elaborate and 
admirable series of resolves, which were designed as a plan of go- 
vernment for the county of Mecklenburg, and which were read to 
the people on the same spot, on the thirtieth of May, or ten days 
after the date of the supposed declaration, and were published far 
and wide. Now, sir, there is not a more established rule of evi- 
dence in the interpretation of public documents than that which 
ascertains their meaning from a comparison of the opinions ex- 
pressed at or about the same time under the same circumstances or 
in the different stages of the same case. Let us apply this rule to 
the resolves of the Mecklenburg committee, published on the thir- 
tieth of May, the authenticity of which is placed beyond all doubt. 
A learned professor of this college has recently pronounced the 
constitution of Virginia, framed by the Convention of 1776, the 



26 THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. 

first written constitution of a free state in the annals of the world;* 
and he has said truly. But why did he make such an assertion ? 
Had not South Carolina formed a plan of government before the 
date of that instrument? Assuredly she had. Had not New Hamp- 
shire done the same thing? Yes, sir, she had. How comes it 
then that our professor asserts for Virginia a priority of claim above 
her sister states to such an honor? Simply because in the plans of 
government formed by the states aforesaid, they limited the exis- 
tence of their constitutions until such time as the difficulties with 
the mother country should be settled : thus recognising by such a 
limitation the right of eminent domain in the British crown. With 
this distinction in view, let us look at the resolves of the thirtieth 
of May, by the Mecklenburg committee. And here, sir, I cannot 
express myself too warmly in favor of the superior skill with which 
these resolves are drawn. They deserve to rank among the first 
compositions of the great era in which they appeared, and which 
they adorn. The beauty of their diction, their elegant precision, 
the wide scope of statesmanship which they exhibit, prove incontes- 
tibly that the men who put them forth were worthy of their high 
trust at that difficult crisis. They well knew the progress of the 
controversy with the mother country, and the temper of the times. 
The resolves are as formal and as regular a plan of government for 
a county, and almost as much in detail as our own constitution, 
(adopted a twelve month afterwards,) was for a state. And let me 
say they are from the pen of Ephraim Brevard, an exalted patriot, 
who, not content with the use of words however gracefully in his 
country's cause, embarked at once in the military service, and in 
his capacity as surgeon was taken prisoner at Charleston, and was 
at last dismissed on parole, but not until he had contracted a dis- 
ease of which he died soon after his return home. Sir, if North 
Carolina, like our own Virginia, were not too backward in testifying 
by overt acts her regard for her departed patriots, one of the first 
questions an American would ask on entering her beautiful metro- 
polis would be: where is the monument to Brevard? Well, sir, 
this paper, drawn with such consummate skill, speaks for itself, and 
will speak forever. It discloses all the purposes and plans of the 
committee. Now what does it say of a declaration of indepen- 

* Discourse before the Virginia Historical Society in 1S52, by Prof. Washington. 



MECKLENBURG RESOLUTIONS OF THE THIRTIETH OF MAY. 27 

dence alledged to have been made ten days before ? Does it recog- 
nise in its elaborate provisions a previous formal declaration ? It is 
as silent as the grave on the subject. There is no allusion to a pre- 
vious meeting at all. So far as the face of this paper shows, there 
never was such a previous meeting for independence or for any 
thing else. But this is not all. It is not only silent on the subject 
of a previous declaration, but shows that it is impossible that any 
such declaration could have been made. For it adopts the course 
of South Carolina and New Hampshire, and almost their words, 
and provides in the eighteenth resolve "that these resolves shall 
be in full force and virtue until instructions from the provincial 
Congress (colonial assembly) regulating the jurisprudence of the 
province, or the legislative body of Great Britain resign its unjust 
and arbitrary pretensions with respect to America ;" thus recognising 
in the plainest terms the right of eminent domain in the British 
crown. Now, sir, when we reflect upon the character of the men, 
and observe the admirable policy prescribed by the resolutions, is it 
not clear that if they had made a deliberate declaration of inde- 
pendence only ten days before, they would still have maintained 
their ground, or, if they thought proper to sound a retreat, would 
have offered some shadow of apology for their retrograde move- 
ment? Sir, the case is palpable enough. They never made any 
such formal declaration at all. Hence there was no occasion either 
for retraction, or for an allusion to a previous meeting. Let us sup- 
pose that the declaration had really been made; let us suppose that 
the shout which we are recently told by an eloquent divine on the 
announcement of the declaration had rent the sky, had really made 
all the confusion in the upper regions which he said it made, what 
would have followed when the same Col. Polk, who read the sup- 
posed declaration, again appeared after an interval of only ten days 
before the same excited multitude, and read a paper which recanted 
all the high talk about an absolution of allegiance, and which 
brought the people back again under the heel of the British king — 
that very king who had been employing that interval in slaughter- 
ing their brethren, and in filling our cities and our seas with a hire- 
ling soldieiy ? Sir, no sooner had the recreant words been uttered, 
than the click of a hundred triggers would have greeted the ears of 
the traitor. And, if he escaped alive, it would have been only to 
bear a name as infamous as that of Monteith in the land of their 



28 MECKLENBURG RESOLUTIONS OF THE THIRTIETH OF MAY. 

Scottish ancestors, or as that of Arnold subsequently became in our 
own. But no such thing happened, and for the best of all reasons, 
— there had been no previous declaration ; and the patriot Polk re- 
ceived, as he deserved, the hearty congratulations of his friends 
and neighbors. Now then the whole affair of the Mecklenburg dec- 
laration resolves itself into this: either there was no declaration, or 
there was. If there was none, there is an end of the matter; but, 
if it was made, then was it ignominiously recanted ten days after it 
was made, by the very men who made it, on the spot where it was 
made ; aye, in the presence of the very same people who are 
reported to have hailed it with enthusiastic applause, and who 
meanly uttered the same demonstrations of joy when they were 
again reduced ten days after under the vassalage of the British 
king; and the declaration having been thus recanted by those who 
made it, lost its value as a chart of honor, and can no longer be 
exhibited as the Prima Charta of a great commonwealth, and the 
most precious of her patriotic gems. Thus, sir, it is seen, that 
even if there had been such a declaration, as assuredly there was 
not, it is a worthless and withered thing, and not to be introduced 
into decent history in comparison with the authentic acts of other 
states on the same subject. Now, if I were disposed to imitate the 
example of the most violent advocate of the Mecklenburg declara- 
tion,* and intermix with a purely patriotic theme the rancor of 
personal and political prejudice, might I not go on and affirm, on 
the strength of the well known maxim of the law — -falsum in uno 
falsum in omnibus — that, as the resolution of the twentieth of May 
about independence was never adopted, so none of its associate 
resolutions were adopted? And might I not go a step farther, and 
deny that there was any meeting at all on the twentieth of May ? 
The main proof that is brought to show that there was a meeting on 
that day — for the resolutions themselves, even if they were genu- 
ine, as they have no date, prove nothing — is the parole testimony of 
five or six old ment who testify their belief that their was a meet- 
ing held on that day, and who, after such a lapse of time, might 
naturally enough have confounded the twentieth with the thirtieth 
of May, when a glorious meeting was really held, and thus have 
made a mistake of ten days in forty years. For, if there was such 

* Jones in his " Defence of North Carolina." 
f Dr. Hawks' Lecture, 



MECKLENBURG RESOLUTIONS OP TIIE THIRTIETH OF MAY. 29 

a meeting, what did it do, and why the necessity of another meet- 
ing ten days after? And might I not carry the war of retaliation 
still farther, and accuse all those honorable men who have upheld 
the genuineness of the declaration with their te.-timony, their aiders 
and abettors, as so many conspirators against the truth of history 
and the rightful claim of Virginia to her primal honors in the 
cause of independence, which for almost half a century she had 
gracefully worn, and which, it now appears, so far as the Mecklen- 
burg declaration is concerned, she will w T ear forever ? And, if it 
were alledged that so many reputable people as those who testify in 
favor of the declaration and argue in its defence cannot be de- 
ceived, might I not point to the story of the Ossian fraud in the 
history of the land from which the ancestors of the Mecklenburg 
people, and some of the people themselves, came — a fraud that was 
sustained by the learned and the ignorant alike, by the professor 
from his chair and by the peasant in his hovel? Could I not show 
that there were thousands of men in every station of life ready to 
swear, and did swear, that they had heard in their infancy the wild 
rant of McPherson, and to lay down their lives in defence of the 
authenticity of Ossian ? And could I not point out, as an apt coin- 
cidence, that a learned Scotch theologian,* as a learned and eloquent 
North Carolina theologian has recently done in the Mecklenburg 
affair, put forth a most elaborate argument in defence of the bard of 
the mountain and the mist? And might not I charge, as was 
charged against Scotland, that the whole people of Carolina were 
banded together to maintain per fas aut nefas their title to what 
they deem their most distinguished honor ? But, sir, I will use no 
such language^ and for the best of all reasons — it would not reflect 
my feelings. I know too well the tendency of the human mind in 
its highest and best estate to err, and how frail the recollections of 
men are after a lapse of years, and I love and venerate the memory 
of the patriots of North Carolina with that large and overflowing 
measure which they deserve from every American heart. And 
especially would I refrain from words of recrimination, because I 
should be imitating an example which I would most studiously 
avoid, of the most strenuous advocate of the Mecklenburg declara- 
tion in the wanton harshness and bitter personal enmity with which 
he has assailed Virginia's greatest statesman, who was educated 

* Dr. Blair in his dissertation on Ossian, 



30 THE NORTH CAROLINA RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

within your walls, and whose name is the proudest and most glo- 
rious ever recorded on your rolls. 

In closing this branch of our subject, let me speak a word to our 
Carolina friends in the spirit of respect and friendship. Drop the 
Mecklenburg declaration so called. If it is false, it is unworthy of 
the regard of all honest men; and, if it be true, it impugns the 
courage and wisdom of your purest patriots, and derogates from the 
majesty and grandeur of the noble resolutions of the thirtieth of 
May. These are ample enough to fill the measure of the loftiest 
patriotism. Fall back upon them, or rather advance to them; and 
with these in her hand, North Carolina may take what place she 
pleases in the history of our common country. 

But there is another claimant for the honor of the first declara- 
tion of independence, who has recently appeared, and whose title, 
taken from the record, is pronounced indisputable. And whom do 
you take this new claimant to be? Wh} r , sir, she is a sovereign 
state, and the very one of ail the sisterhood of states whom I would 
wish to wear the honor, if Virginia is at last to lose it from that brow 
which for almost eighty years it has so well become. It is none other 
than North Carolina herself, appearing this time not as the repre- 
sentative of one of her counties, but in her proper person and in 
her own right. And are we, Mr. President, to lose the honor at 
last? Is that precious treasure which our dear departed fathers 
valued so highly, and thought so safe, to be taken from us at this 
late day, and forever? Well, let it go. Let Carolina wear it as 
worthily as her elder sister has worn it, and we will not complain. 
Still, before we part with it, it is at least becoming to look into the 
title of her who claims it. Here it is. In the same lecture before 
the New York Historical Society, in which Dr. Hawks defends 
with so much ability the Mecklenburg declaration, this eloquent 
son of Carolina, who though no longer a resident within her limits, 
cherishes her glory with truly filial affection, produced a resolution 
of the provincial Congress of that State on the subject of indepen- 
dence adopted on the twelfth of April, 1776, which is a month 
earlier than the resolution of Virginia, which I not Ions; since read, 
instructing her delegates in Congress to propose independence. 
Here it is : 

" Resolved, that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental 
Congress be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other 



THE NORTH CAROLINA RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 31 

Colonies in declaring independence, and forming foreign alliances, 
reserving to this Colony the sole and exclusive right of forming a 
constitution and laws for this Colony, and of appointing delegates 
from time to time, (under the direction of a general representative 
thereof,) to meet the delegates of the other Colonies." 

Are you satisfied? Will you give up the ship? After all our 
trouble in tripping that buxom daughter of Mecklenburg, are we to 
have the old woman come down upon us with a vengeance after all ? 
One thing is certain. We cannot fight this resolution with dates. 
Nor can we impugn its authenticity. These points are settled by 
the undoubted record. What shall we do ? At all events, before 
we strike our flag, let us look our foe fairly in the face. When he 
had read the North Carolina resolution, the accomplished lecturer 
proceeds to say: "This, we repeat, is the first open and public 
declaration for independence, by the proper authority of any one of 
the Colonies, that can be found on record." Now, sir, with all due 
deference, I deny that this Carolina resolution is any declaration 
for independence at all. The Carolina Congress, so far from de- 
claring independence, does not even instruct its delegates in gene- 
ral Congress to bring it forward. Nor is this all. It not only 
fails to instruct the delegates to bring forward a declaration, but 
even to vote for one when brought forward by others. The resolu- 
tion contains no instruction whatever. All that it pretends to do is 
to confer on the delegates in Congress a naked power of concurring 
with others in declaring independence, provided, always, that the 
delegates choose to assume the responsibility of so doing. So far 
as this resolution is concerned, if the declaration had not been made 
to this hour, and the Carolina delegates had abstained from bringing 
forward a proposition in favor of one, they would have kept within 
its legitimate scope ; and if a declaration had been brought forth by 
others, and the Carolina delegates had unanimously refused to sus- 
tain it, they would still have acted within the scope of the resolu- 
tion, which gives them the naked power of voting for a declaration, 
but throws the whole responsibility of the act on the delegates, 
who might or might not assume it as they thought proper. Nay, so 
far as this resolution is concerned, the Carolina delegates, even 
though all the delegates from the other states had assented to the 
declaration, might have withheld their assent up to this very hour 
of the fifty-fifth year of the nineteenth century, and yet complied 



32 THE NORTH CAROLINA RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

fully with all the requisitions which it imposed upon them. That 
the terms of the resolution are not casual or accidental, but were 
drawn with considerate caution, may be inferred from one fact, 
among others, that the body which passed it had voted down a pro- 
position in favor of independence at a preceding session, when, by 
the way, one of the Mecklenburg committee which is said to have 
declared independence on the twentieth of May of the previous 
year was present, and helped to vote down the resolution for inde- 
pendence. That the Carolina resolution was drawn with deliberate 
caution, is supported by contemporaneous testimony, and was a 
common topic of remark by our fathers at the time. Thus a 
writer under the signature of Aristides in the Virginia Gazette of 
the thirty-first of May, 1776, calls attention to the manifest dis- 
tinction between the resolution of North Carolina, which merely 
empowers her delegates to vote for independence at their own will 
and pleasure, and the resolution of Virginia which peremptorily 
instructs her delegates to propose independence whether they are 
willing or not. This writer remarks: "The two Carolinas (so it 
seems that South Carolina comes in for her share of honor as well 
as North) have agreed to concur in all measures that may be 
approved by Congress for the general welfare of the American 
empire. Virginia alone stands up, and gives the great example 
with positive orders to her delegates to vote for independence at all 
events." The resolution of North Carolina was then well under- 
stood at the time, as assuming no responsibility on the subject of an 
immediate declaration, but as throwing it upon her delegates, who 
might or might not assume it as they pleased. Should they assume 
it, then and not till then did her responsibility begin. That her 
delegates were not likely to be too forward in their action, 'both Mr. 
Jefferson and Mr. Adams bear significant testimony.* The decided 
tone of the Virginia resolution settled the subject at once. The 
resolution for independence was instantly brought forward by one 
of her delegates, and was in due time adopted. There was no 

* I mean not the slightest reflection on the patriots who composed the North 
Carolina delegation, and Professor Tucker has shown that Mr. Jefferson did not 
use the words which have given so much offence in the sense imputed to them; 
but the letters of Jefferson and Adams show that they did not regard the North 
Carolina delegation as eager for independence. It was a question of time, on 
which the purest and ablest patriots differed, and might well differ. South Caro- 
lina voted against the resolution of Congress, declaring that the Colonies were 
free and independent. 



THE NORTH CAROLINA RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 33 

shrinking from instant responsibility, there was no delay, but prompt 
and conclusive action followed. With this fair representation of 
the whole case, may we not safely affirm that the resolution of 
North Carolina, which was in fact no positive declaration at all. 
which did not even enjoin upon her delegates to sustain indepen- 
dence when proposed by others, and which was well known by our 
fathers, and regarded for what it was worth, can never be brought 
into comparison for a moment with the bold and timely movement 
of Virginia? And am I not right in concluding that Virginia may 
continue to wear the honor of the "first open and public declara- 
tion for independence by the proper authority of any one of the 
Colonies that can be found on record," until some more potent 
claimant shall arise to take it from her ? And may I not say to the 
eloquent Carolinian, that he must first hunt up some other act of 
his beloved State, duly spread upon the record, which she has per- 
formed, or some downright and instant responsibility which she has 
assumed in favor of independence, prior to the fifteenth day of 
May, 1776, before she is entitled to bear away from our venerated 
mother the laurel which she has worn so long ? And let me tell 
him that, when such a case is fairly made out, Virginia will not 
higgle upon trifles; but, as she has freely and magnanimously given 
vast principalities to be divided among her associate states, so she 
will be ever ready to unbind her own laurels, and twine them with 
her own fingers about the brow of a worthier sister? 

If I may appear, Mr. President, to have dwelt too long on the 
topics which I have discussed, it must be remembered, that if Vir- 
ginians will not take the trouble of preserving the glory of their 
ancestors intact, nobody will perform the office in their behalf; and 
although I am quite willing to confess, that, whether our fathers 
performed a noble action on one day or another is comparatively 
unimportant, yet, as other states have embarked in the race of dates, 
and are ready to found upon them high claims to public conside- 
ration, it is only fair that the case of our own state be plainly set 
forth, fully conscious as w r e are, that it will speak for itself. And, 
if the reputation of Virginia is to be defended, what ground is more 
appropriate than that which we are now treading, what place more 
becoming than beneath the roof which sheltered the infancy of 
many of those eminent men who wrought out her independence, 
and of others who have since illustrated her name with unfading 
3 



34 ELECTION OF GOVERNOR. 

honor, and within the limits of this city where stood her ancient 
capitol in which she first defied the power of the British king, from 
which she sent forth her resolution for independence, in which she 
laid the foundation of the young Commonwealth, and beside the 
moral grandeur of which the proudest structure ever reared by hu- 
man hands vanishes as the vision of a dream ? 

When the Convention adopted on the twenty-ninth of June the 
new constitution, the members proceeded immediately, in pursuance 
of its provisions, to elect a governor, a council of state, and an 
attorney general.* Patrick Henry, Jr., as he was then called — 
for his venerable uncle of the same name, who had kindly retired 
at his request from the court ground at Hanover when the young 
orator was about to make his debut in the parson's cause, who lived 
to see his namesake take up his abode in the palace heretofore 
occupied by the representatives of the British king, and who made 
him the executor of his will, still survived — Patrick Henry was 
elected the first Governor of the Commonwealth by a majority of fif- 
teen votes over Thomas Nelson, the elder, who received forty-five ; a 
result which probably showed the state of parties as they existed at 
the commencement of the session. A committee of several mem- 
bers, at the head of whom was George Mason, was appointed to 
inform the governor of his election, which duty they promptly per- 
formed, and reported his acceptance in the form of a letter to the 
house, which is a graceful specimen of his style, and which is re- 
markable as the first paper from the chair of an American execu- 
tive, which contains the magical words now so familiar to us all — 
"the Commonwealth of Virginia," and "fellow-citizen." A man 
of the times, he seems at once to have fallen into the peculiar 
phraseology of the new era; but, as the letter is to be found in 
Wirt and in the Journal of the Convention, I shall not trouble you 
with it for the present. 

Within five days after the election of the governor and council, 
and when the body had dispatched a large amount of current busi- 
ness — for, as I have said, up to this period it was the legislative 3 

* The names of the council were John Page, Dudley Digges, John Tayloe, 
John Blair, Benjamin Harrison, of Berkeley, Bartholomew Uandridge, Thomas 
Nelson, and Charles Carter, of Shirley. Thomas Nelson declined serving on 
account of his infirmities, and Benjamin Harrison, of Brandon, was next day 
elected in his stead. Edmund Randolph was appointed Attorney General. The 
salary of the Governor was £1,000, that of the council to be apportioned ac- 
cording to attendance, £1,600, and that of the Attorney General £200. 



APPEARANCE OF THE CONVENTION. 35 

and, when in session, the executive of the Colony, and, among other 
things, had adapted the liturgy to the new state of things, approved 
the design of a common seal, and provided that the constitution 
should be "published in the respective parish churches and meet- 
ing-houses for two Sundays successively, immediately after divine 
service;" the Convention adjourned on the fifth of July. And 
it ought to remind us of the fleeting nature of our mortal existence, 
when we reflect that of all who aided in forming the constitution, 
and of all who heard it proclaimed in the churches, not a solitary 
survivor remains. And even the constitution itself has passed 
away, but not until it had fulfilled its office, and for half a century 
had diffused the blessings of liberty and law over a free, a great, 
and a happy people. 

It is high time, sir, that we become better acquainted with the 
individual members w T ho composed the Convention ; and I confess 
that this is the main point of view in which I would present my 
subject, feeling, as I do, most painfully, that their memory, which 
ousrht to be as lasting- as the hills, as living; as the streams, and as 
fresh as the flowers of the lovely land which they have bequeathed 
to us, is fast fading from the public mind. Let us look at the mem- 
bers as they are sitting in solemn assembly. You see at once that 
it is an august body. You mark, indeed, a variety of character in 
those manly faces and in those stalwart forms, and a various cos- 
tume. You can tell the men who come from the bay counties and 
from the banks of the large rivers, and who, from the facility with 
which they could exchange their products for British goods, are 
clothed in foreign fabrics. You can al.^o tell those who live off 
from the great arteries of trade, far in the interior, in the shadow of 
the Blue Ridge, in the Valley, and in that splendid principality out 
of which the county of Botetourt had been lately formed and named 
in honor of the popular and lamented Berkeley, but which still 
stretched onward to the Mississippi, and was called West Augusta. 
These are mostly clad in homespun, or in the more substantial 
buckskin, which so early and so long gave a name at home and 
abroad to our people.* The well powdered wig, you see, with its 

* The worthy Mrs. Glass, the tobacconist, in the Heart of Midlothian, propo- 
ses to send the unfortunate but beautiful Erne Deans to her Virginia correspon- 
dent Ephraim Buckskin, Esq., who had left with her a standing order for a 
wife. Many members of the assembly up to the present century wore buck- 
skin breeches. John Clarke, of Campbell, wore them to the last. The last 



36 THE DRESS OF MEMBERS. 

graceful curls and ample proportions, was freely worn. That on 
the head of the great orator of the assembly looks rather the worse 
for wear. Some of the members, you perceive, still cling to the 
cocked hat; others have native hunting caps in their hands, and 
others a°-ain, who are young and dressy, wear those conical hats 
that you see on the heads of the members of the House of Commons 
in the paintings of the time of the Protectorate, and which were 
now comin°- into vogue.* The sword, which had been worn in the 
House of Commons in the days of Sir Robert Walpole, had gone 
out of fashion, except on high state occasions ; but many of the 
members from the interior had come to the city well armed ; for 
they had heard that Norfolk had been burned to ashes three months 
before by Dunmore, who controlled the waters of the Colony, and 
who might peep in upon them in this city merely to see what 
they were about. If you look more closely at the members, you 
will be struck with their noble stature. You mark their dignified 
mien, their high bearing. There are one hundred and twenty-eight 
in all, and one hundred and twenty-eight finer looking men are 
rarely seen together. Their courage, their intelligence, their patri- 
otism, their physical capacity to endure the toils of war which some 
of them were to court, and the trophies of which some of them 
were to win, were calculated to inspire the people with resolution 
to prosecute the great contest to which they were now fully com- 
mitted. There were, indeed, some aged men, better fitted for the 
council than the field, and of these we shall presently speak. 
Whence, do you inquire, did this band of patriots come ? From 
what stock did they spring? Whence that devoted spirit of liberty, 
that ennobling love of country, which was impelling them to the 

pair of buckskin breeches that I have seen, belonged to the wardrobe of the 
late John Randolph, of Roanoke. They were elegantly made, evidently by a 
London tailor. 

* Mr. Madison wore one of the conical hats, and was so unfortunate as to 
have it stolen from the passage of a house in Williamsburg, where he was visit- 
ing. He used to tell how embarrassed he was by the loss of his hat at a time 
when from the non-importation laws it was difficult to supply its place. By the 
way, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the House of Burgesses, though 
studi ously observant of all the forms of the House of Commons, never adopted 
the practice of wearing hats during the session. Nor did the chairman in com- 
mittee of the whole take the chair of the speaker, but sat at the clerk's table,, 
And when the house was in committee, the mace was taken from the table of 
the clerk and placed beneath it. And it may be observed here, that the mem- 
bers of the dilferent Conventions took no oaths ; while the members of the 
House of Burgesses always took the oaths taken by the members of the 
House of Commons. 



THE VIRGINIA CHARACTER. 37 

field against the most formidable nation of the earth, rather than 
pay a trifling tax on tea — an article which many of them would 
have scorned to taste ?* ! that the history of such a race were 
worthily written. O! that our historians, instead of beginning and 
ending with the acts of the beggarly governors who for a century 
and a half were sent over to fatten on the revenues of the Colony, 
and calling such a record Virginia's history, had looked to the races 
from which this glorious stock had risen, their high spirit, their 
burning patriotism ! These writers tell us that these noble quali- 
ties have been derived from a class of men who came over from 
time to time, few and far between, and under the name of cavaliers 
sought a livelihood in the Colony. Miserable figment ! Outrage- 
ous calumny ! Why, sir, the cavalier was essentially a slave — a 
compound slave — a slave to the king and a slave to the church. 
He was the last man in the world from whom any great elemental 
principle of liberty and law could come. He was as incapable of 
transmitting such a principle to others, as he was of conceiving it 
himself. It is true that some of this class did come over at intervals. 
Some came with the gallant John Smith ; but, when he found out 
how worthless they were, he implored the Virginia company to 
send no more. Even the gallant Smith himself left the Colony af- 
ter a short sojourn, and was soon followed by Percy, whom the 
first honors of the colony could not tempt to remain within its bor- 
ders, t But when the great gold shipment turned to dross, the 
cavalier came no more. A home in the wilderness, to be cleared 
by his own axe, and guarded by his own musket against a wily foe, 
was no place for the voluptuary and the idler. The size of the 

* Tea was used by the great families of the seaboard, and in some of the 
wealthier ones in the interior; but its use was not general. As it was costly, it 
became a proverb when a family accustomed to use it fell into pecuniary trou- 
bles, "so much for drinking tea," I have seen the early silver spoons introduced 
into Charlotte county. They would be lost in a modern cup. Coffee in time 
became the favorite beverage, but was used sparingly. There are persons now 
living who remember when in wealthy families coffee was used on Sunday 
mornings only. In the early days of Hampden Sidney College, neither tea nor 
coffee was used. In this, as in many other instances, habits and customs 
brought over by the colonists survived long after they were dropped in the 
mother country. If the present generation be inclined to associate meanness 
and poverty with the absence of tea and coffee, it should be remembered that 
neither was used at the magnificent banquet at Kenelworth, which Leicester 
gave to Elizabeth, and which some of the first colonists may have seen. 

t We are indebted to Conway Robinson, Esq. that a fine portrait of Percy, 
copied from the original in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland, now 
adorns the hall of the Virginia Historical Society. 



38 CHARACTER OF THE CAVALIER. 

farms patented before the civil wars shows that they were culti- 
vated, if not by the personal labor, at least under the immediate 
and constant supervision of their owners. During the civil wars 
some of the cavaliers fled hither, as they did to other parts of 
the world, from the edge of that Anglo-Saxon sword which was 
wielded so effectually in defence of the liberties of England ;* but, 
when that contest was over, and British freedom had fallen by 
the treason of its friends, many of those ardent supporters of despo- 
tism in church and state returned to their old home as a more con- 
genial place for them. Sir, I look with contempt on that miserable 
figment, which has so long held a place in our histories, which 
seeks to trace the distinguishing and salient points of the Virginia 
character to the influence of those butterflies of the British aristo- 
cracy, who, unable to earn their bread at home, came over to the 
Colony to feed on whatever crumbs they might gather in some 
petty office, or from the race-course, or from the gaming table, in- 
stead of regarding those distinctive traits as the legitimate results 
of a great Anglo-Saxon people placed in a position of all others 
best adapted to the full and generous development of their pecu- 
liar virtues. The secret of our colonial character lies far deeper. 
If you will look into the reigns of Henry the eighth and Elizabeth, 
you will find some of the causes which led to the settlement of Vir- 
ginia. For a long series of years the domestic policy of England, as 
distinguished from its civil and political, had been assuming a form 
most odious to the bulk of the people. The effect of that policy 
was to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. The tenure of 
villenage was indeed abolished ; but this privilege tended to make 
things rather worse than better ; for every man was bound to main- 
tain himself and his family in a country in which almost every foot 
of land belonged to the church, to the nobility, or to the king. But 
what greatly added to the embarrassments of the poor was the 
comparative abandonment of tillage by the wealthy proprietors, es- 
pecially during the reigns of Henry the eighth and Elizabeth, and 
the laying down all the best lands in pasturage. t Hume tells us 
that a single farmer would own four and twenty thousand sheep, 

* If the reader wishes to see a curious group of cavaliers who had fled to 
Virginia in 1649, let him consult Col. Norwood's Voyage to Virginia. Va. His- 
torical Register, Vol. II, 136. 

t Consult Hume, reign of Henry the eighth. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE VIRTUES OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 39 

and that laws were repeatedly enacted to restrain a policy which 
threw the laboring population almost wholly out of employment, but 
were enacted in vain. It was when this obnoxious policy had 
wrought its effect, that the Colony of Virginia was open for settle- 
ment. During the existence of the Virginia company, which con- 
trolled emigration, the rush of the people to the new world, though 
their attention had been awakened on the subject, had not fairly 
begun ; but when the charter of the company was withdrawn, and 
before 1670, the human tide began to flow in a deeper and wider 
stream than had yet been seen in the history of European coloniza-> 
tion. In 1670, when the population of the Colony did not exceed 
forty thousand persons, of whom two thousand only were slaves, 
Sir William Berkeley deposed in his answers to the lords commis- 
sioners of plantations, that the annual number of emigrants for the 
seven previous years reached fifteen hundred;* a wonderful emi- 
gration, when we reflect upon the tonnage of the ships of that day, 
and surpassing in proportion that which is now crowding to our 
shores. And let me say in passing that, if we look to the history 
of the times, we may fairly presume that among the emigrants, as 
is freely confessed by Beverley when it. suited his purpose so to do, 
were many of those brave men who had served under Cromwell, 
and whose backs, as has been truly said, no enemy ever saw.t 
This was in the regular course of events. But when some great 
political commotion occurred in England, such as the Monmouth 
rebellion,! when some great calamity raged, as the plague in Lon- 
don, the number of emigrants was proportionally enhanced. At 
such a rate of addition as stated by Berkeley, the population of the 
Colony, including the native increase, would double itself in a very 
short time. And who were these emigrants that crowded to our 
shores ? Were they cavaliers, with their soft hands complained of 
by Smith as unknowing of the axe, and with their pack of trumpery 
fashions on their backs ? ! no, sir. Their good-natured but un- 
principled and ungrateful monarch was now on his throne. The 
mouldering remains of the greatest character in peace and in war 
which England had ever known were torn from the grave and 
chained to the gibbet. Hard work had no charms for men who 

* Va. Hist. Reg. Vol. Ill, 10. f Beverley calls them Oliverians. 

X See C. Campbell's History, p. 99, where the cruel letter of Sunderland con- 
cerning the rebels is given at length. 



40 CAUSES OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE COLONY. 

were contending for the smiles of Eleanor Gwynn, or were ena- 
mored of the more exquisite graces of the Querouaille. Who then 
composed that living stream which was to diffuse civilization 
through the new world, and who were to make the wilderness blos- 
som as the rose ? They were poor, very poor in worldly goods ; 
many of them could not pay their passage, and were sold for a time 
as servants, passing through a stern but wholesome apprenticeship 
on the plantations, which prepared them in due time to set up for 
themselves. They were the very men above all others whom we 
could wish them to have been. They were the bone and sinew of 
that unconquerable people, whom, made up of the Britons, the An- 
gles, the Danes, the Finns, the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Normans, 
we call, for the want of a better name, the Anglo-Saxons ; a people 
as remarkable for their love of rural life as they were terrible in 
war. They were the descendants of the men who. under the vali- 
ant kings of Britain, struck terror into the fiercest legions of France, 
and made the names of Poictiers and Agincourt classic words in 
British story. It was the brothers of those very men, and some of 
the men themselves, who made the army of Cromwell more formi- 
dable than the hosts of the Edwards and Henries ever were, and 
who scourged the cavalier so sorely that he did not feel safe in his 
shoon until he had the sea between him and his foe. As for the 
Valley of Virginia, the Germans owed no obligations to the cava- 
lier ; and as little did the Scotch-Irish, who were ever most de- 
voted to freedom in church and state, and whose course before and 
during the Revolution was one continued blaze of glory, put forth 
any title of descent from such an ancestry ; though coming, of 
course, from the great Anglo-Saxon stock. Sir, I cannot but regret 
that to this hour the class and character of the mass of our colonial 
population is a sealed book in our history. I fear that no record 
presents a true state of our white population as late as thirty years 
anterior to the Revolution. Writers on statistics sometimes infer 
the amount of the population of a country and its extent of business 
from the number of law-suits in a successive series of years. If 
this test were applied, the result would show an amount of 
white population in certain counties greater than can now be 
readily believed. In the year 1770, the docket of the cases in 
which a single lawyer was engaged in what was then almost a 



THE CHARACTER OF THE EMIGRANTS. 41 

frontier county, who practiced in several other counties also, filled 
fifty half foolscap pages written on one side.* Thus we see what a 
large white population existed in the interior counties, and which, 
being engaged wholly in agriculture and entitled to vote, elected the 
men who composed the Virginia Convention of '76. How that Con- 
vention would have laughed to scorn the notion that they, and those 
who chose them, owed their high courage, their keen sense of 
wrong, their exalted love of liberty in church and state, to a set of 
vagrants and office-bearers who never drew a sword but in defence 
of a tyrant king, and whose highest ambition only sought the petty 
honors which a tyrant deemed high enough for his tools in a dis- 
tant Colony! What would Benjamin Harrison have said to such 
a dogma ; he, who, if not lineally descended, as was sometime be- 
lieved, from his namesake in the High Court of Justice which con- 
demned the "martyr of blessed memory" to the block, was of his 
race, and whose son in the fullness of time was to preside in that 
confederate empire, the corner-stone of the greatest State of which 
he was about to lay ?t What would John Tyler have said, who 
was related to, if not directly descended from, the greatest rebel in 
English history, after whom he had named a son; whose maternal 
ancestor was a Huguenot, and who, though not a member of the 
Convention, attended its debates, and was among the first to take 
up arms in his country's cause ; who was in a few months to begin 
a civil career, which extended through more than the third of a 
century; whose great and unapproachable honor it was that he pro- 
posed in the House of Delegates the resolution which convoked the 
meeting at Annapolis which ultimately resulted in the call of the 
General Convention which formed the federal constitution ; and 
whose son of the same name, who is now present as the Rector of 
this college, lending the influence of his name and character to the 
promotion of the literature of his native State, was also to preside 
in that federal government which the resolution of the father may 

* Paul Carrington's docket of the cases in which he was employed in Cum- 
berland county court. The original is in my possession. 

f It is a singular fact that, although the Harrisons are not lineally descended 
from Major General Harrison of the Parliamentary army on the paternal side, 
those of Brandon at least are descended from him on the mother's side through 
the Willings. Harrison is stated by the editor of Pepys to have been the son 
of a butcher, and Sir Walter Scott harps upon the fact in Woodstock. 



42 THE HUGUENOT AND THE SCOTCH. 

be said, in a certain sense, to have called into existence ? * What 
would Thomas Jefferson have said, who, though a member of 
the Convention, was unable to quit his post in Congress ; who 
drafted the preamble to the constitution which the Convention was 
about to adopt ; who was the author of that admirable paper in 
which the true connexion of the Colonies with the mother country 
was first clearty defined ; who had recently written the answer of 
the House of Burgesses to the propositions of Lord North ; who was 
ever foremost in the contest at home, and was to draw the declara- 
tion of independence by the Congress ; and who was to preside 
with unparalleled honor, not in the person of his son, but in his 
proper person, in the government of the Union ? He has indeed 
spoken for himself; for when, in the graceful sketch of his life 
from his own pen, he alludes to his father who was a plain planter, 
he speaks of him with a just pride as of a man who had done a 
good deed — who had helped to make the first regular map of Vir- 
ginia ; but when he touches on the maternal side of his house, 
which would have led him into the mists of an uncertain gene- 
alogy, he settles the matter with a dash of his pen. What would 
Thomas Lewis have said, who had not only a sprinkling of Mile- 
sian blood in his veins — for he was born in Ireland — but could also 
claim the kindred blood of the Huguenot and the Covenanter ; 
whose father, the pioneer of West Augusta, slew the Irish lord ; 
whose brother Charles had gloriously fallen two years before at 
Point Pleasant ; whose brother William had distinguished himself 
in the Indian wars, and was an officer during the revolution; whose 
brother Andrew had not only reaped the highest honors in the 
Indian wars, and was the victor at Point Pleasant, and was to drive 
a few days after the adjournment of the Convention the recreant 
Dunmore from the waters of Virginia, but who was, with the single 
exception of Washington, the first military man in the Colony, as 
he was undoubtedly among the first men in peace and in war of the 
era in which he lived, and who was to seal his devotion to his 

* I have alluded in the text to the fact, that John Tyler called a son after 
Wat Tyler. On one occasion when Patrick Henry visited Mr. Tyler, between 
whom and Henry there existed a long and intimate friendship, terminated only 
by the death of the latter, he saw the infant on the lap of his mother, and asked 
his name. "He is called, Col. Henry, after the two greatest rebels in English 
history." " Pray, madam, who were they ?" " Wat Tyler and Patrick Henry." 
The name of the boy was Walter Henry Tyler. I learned this incident from 
Ex-President Tyler. 



THOMAS LEWIS, HENRY TAZEWELL, PATRICK HENRY. 43 

adopted country by death from disease contracted in the public ser- 
vice ere he reached his own fireside ; and who, embarking in civil 
life, had voted for the resolutions of Henry against the stamp act, 
and for those embodying the militia? What, I say, would Thomas 
Lewis have said, that sterling patriot, whose single vote carried 
successfully through the House of Burgesses the fifth and fiercest 
resolution of Henry against the stamp act? What would Henry 
Tazewell have said, whose paternal ancestor, as if, like Langoi- 
ran, the bosom friend of Colligny, anticipating the result of that 
struggle between fanaticism and good faith which was raging in the 
breast of Louis the fourteenth, and which impelled him to revoke 
the edict of Nantes, had quitted the vine-clad vallies of his beloved 
France, and had sought the shores of Britain ? What would Pa- 
trick Henry himself have said, who was the author of the resolu- 
tions against the stamp act and of the resolutions for putting the Col- 
ony in a state of defence; who had headed the first military move- 
ment in the Colony, and whose father was a Scotchman of a com- 
paratively recent importation ? Those pure and devoted patriots 
knew full well that their love of liberty, their hatred of wrong, 
their unflinching courage, came from another quarter. Whatever 
merits their fathers, or their fathers' fathers possessed, were all 
their own. They had come over poor, but by industry had ac- 
quired wealth, which was freely used in the education of their chil- 
dren, who in time became an educated class, and, as industry, 
directed by intelligence and honesty, is rarely unsuccessful, their 
children not only retained their inheritance but increased it ; thus 
from generation to generation preparing insensibly but surely for 
the great contest in which they were now engaged. And let me 
say to you, sir, how much more noble it is as well as more true, 
how much more congenial to the pride and honor of the Virginian, 
to reflect that the virtues of his fathers are to be traced, not to a 
race of men whose whole career was one long and bitter and bloody 
protest against civil and religious freedom, but to the great Anglo- 
Saxon family, whose swords were never drawn in vain, and before 
whom the hosts of the cavalier in the old world were driven as 
chaff before the wind? Such were the men who in the council and 
in the field achieved the revolution.* 

* This topic would require a speech in itself to be fully treated, and I can 
only say here, that so ar from the cavalier influence bringing about the Revo- 



44 PENDLETON — THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CAVALIER. 

I have spoken of the folly and falsehood of that philosophy 
which sought to draw upon the cavalier for those qualities which 
ennobled our fathers. Still there was in the Colony a distinct cava- 
lier class, not wholly contemptible in numbers, but more potent in 
influence,' which partook of the character that marked the foreign 
original, and which in its modes of life imitated English manners, prac- 
tised English sports, cherished English prejudices, and were proud 
of the glory of England, not in its loftiest development, but as cast- 
ing its brightness, of all others in the Colony, on itself. But even 
to this class some who could trace a legitimate descent from those 
who came over after the discomfiture and death of Charles, did not 
belong. These descendants differed materially from their ances- 
tors. The architects of their own fortune, reared in that noblest of 
all schools, the school of poverty, they had mingled freely with the 
people and shared their pursuits ; and thus not only lost their he- 
reditary prejudices but adopted popular views, and became the most 
strenuous supporters of the very principles from which their ances- 
tors would have recoiled. It was the spirit of Anglo-Saxon liberty, 
inculcated for generations by the peculiar circumstances of the 
Colony in their race, that made the names of Washington, George 
Mason and the Lees a bulwark in the cause of independence. But 
neither of these was the representative of the party to which by 
the accident of birth he belonged. That office, since the departure 
of John Randolph, fell upon a man who was unconnected with it 
by birth and was infinitely superior to many of its prejudices, but 

lution, the Revolution was brought about in spite of the cavalier. The three 
greatest test measures of that epoch were the resolutions of Henry in 1765 
against the stamp act, the resolutions of the same individual in the Convention 
of March, 1775, for putting the Colony into military array, and the resolution 
instructing the delegates in Congress to propose independence. Now of all 
these measures the cavalier party, as a party, was the stoutest opponent. It is 
true, that on the last mentioned resolution the vote in the journal is set down 
as unanimous; but we know from a letter of George Mason to R. H. Lee, dated 
May 18, 1776, that there was a considerable minority, and we know from other 
sources who composed that minority. This minority, when it was plain that 
the members composing it must either be drummed into independence, or 
drummed out of the country, finally came in. It would be invidious to single 
out by name the cavaliers who at the beginning of the troubles were placed 
und^r heavy bonds, were confined to the forks of rivers, or were escorted under 
guard into the interior. Unfortunately, so far as the convenience of reference 
is concerned, the ayes and noes were never taken in the House of Burgesses or 
in the Conventions, and we are compelled to hunt up the votes of individuals 
elsewhere. One thing is clear to my mind, that the three great measures men- 
tioned above were carried by the western vote, that is, by the vote of the mem- 
bers living north and west of Richmond, as were the leading measures of re- 
form some years later. 



EDMUND PENDLETON. 45 

who held some principles in common with the class.* Nor could 
it have devolved on a more suitable person. I allude to Edmund 
Pendleton. 

The origin of this remarkable man was obscure. He was not in 
a legal sense nobody's son, but in the estimation of a haughty gen- 
try he was something worse — he was the son of nobody. He was 
born in 1721, in the county of Caroline, his father having died be- 
fore his birth, and in his fourteenth year he was bound as an ap- 
prentice to Col. Benjamin Robinson, Clerk of Caroline Court. t In 
his sixteenth year he was made clerk to the vestry of St Mary's 
parish in his native county, and appropriated his salary to the pur- 
chase of books which he read diligently. In his twentieth year 
he was made clerk of Caroline Court Martial, and in his twenty- 
first year, with his master's consent, he was licensed to practice 
law, having undergone, as he tells us, a strict examination by Mr. 
Barradall, an eminent law} r er, whose name, having almost died 
away, has been revived by a recent edition of his reports by a Vir- 
ginia publisher, and whose tomb, honored with a Latin inscription, 
may still be seen in the cemetery of this city. Before coming to 
the bar, and before he was of age, Pendleton married Betty Roy, a 
young lady of great beauty, against the consent of his friends, and 
especially of his master, who, however, as he tells us in his old age, 
"still continued his affections to him." This union was destined 
to be short, his wife dying in less than two years after his marriage. 
In his twenty-fourth year he married for his second wife Sarah Pol- 
lard. He had thus far practiced in the county courts with great 
success, and now undertook the management of cases in the Gene- 
ral Court, at the bar of which he continued in full business until 
1774, when the courts were closed by the Revolution. In 1752 he 
was returned a Burgess from the county of Caroline, and was suc- 
cessively re-elected until the body became extinct. In 1774 he 

* The firm and decided course of Peyton Randolph had separated him from 
the cavalier party. In his attendance on Congress he had caught the spirit of 
the times. We are told by Mr. Jefferson that Peyton Randolph, fearing lest 
Col. Nicholas might not write in a spirit which he thought the occasion de- 
manded, requested him to answer the propositions of Lord North. 

f The dates and some of the facts in this sketch are taken from a short ac- 
count of himself written by Pendleton in his latter days. A manuscript copy 
may be seen in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society, and it is printed 
in the Norfolk Beacon, Oct. 3. 1834. 



46 EDMUND PENDLETON. 

was the presiding magistrate of Caroline, and at the same time held 
the responsible and honorable office of County Lieutenant. 

But it is in his more public career as a politician, that his char- 
acter demands our special attention. In the calm of old age, — if, in- 
deed, that calm ever came to a man who from the year 1752 to his 
death in 1803, a period of over half a century, during which, either 
in the capacity of Burgess, of member of Convention, of Speaker of 
the House of Delegates, and of Judge, he was connected with the 
public service, — he states in the brief record of his services by his 
own pen which has come down to us, that "when the dispute with 
Great Britain began, a redress of grievances, and not a revolution of 
government, was my wish." And this sentiment explains the 
course which he pursued throughout the difficulties that led to the 
Revolution. It has been seen that in 1752 he entered the House 
of Burgesses, the sessions of which he assiduously attended, and in 
which he gradually rose into eminence as a public speaker. From 
the similarity of the names of Benjamin Robinson, his old master, 
as he always called him, and of John Robinson, the Speaker of the 
House of Burgesses, it has been usual to regard Pendleton as the 
protege of the Speaker ; but it is probable that the Speaker was 
more deeply indebted to Pendleton than Pendleton was to the 
Speaker.* It is true that their line of policy was the same, and it 
was in Pendleton that the Speaker found his ablest ally when 
the proposition to separate the office of Treasurer from that of 
Speaker, both of which he had held for four and twenty years, was 
made in the House of Burgesses. It was this course of action that 
led the cavalier interest to look up to him for guidance and counsel 
in the crisis that was now at hand. Not a member of the caste, 
his efforts in its defence might assume an impartial air. Of a con- 
servative temper, and fearful of change, he was more solicitous of 
controlling the progress of others than of advancing himself. A 
bold measure, merely because it was bold, was distasteful to him. 
In the interpretation of the gravest questions of policy which spring 
up at a period of impending revolution, he applied the same rules 
with which he would seek in a time of profound peace to amend 
an act of assembty. He was essentially the statesman of peace. 

* Wirt and the Virginia writers generally, except Howison, have fallen into 
the mistake of confounding the two names. Even the author of the biographi- 
cal sketches in the new edition of Call's Reports adopts the error. 



EDMUND PENDLETON. 47 

He had that Intuitive love of prescription which was a marked trait 
in the character of almost all the eminent lawyers to whose exer- 
tions the liberties of England were indebted for their existence. 
The strongest argument that could be urged in favor of a particular 
measure in his view was that it had formed for a century a part of 
the general mind. The same sentiment, which impelled our Eng- 
lish ancestors to declare against a change of the laws of England, 
always governed him. And in ordinary legislation it is unquestion- 
ably the true policy of a Commonwealth. He well knew that in a 
thinly settled country, without a press and without a post, intelli- 
gence was slowly diffused, and that repeated changes which made 
the law either vague or uncertain, whatever might be the outward 
form of the government, established a wretched slavery by the fire- 
sides of the people ; and in this respect we may fairly take a lesson 
from his experience. This principle swayed his conduct not only 
in the Colony but in the Commonwealth. But, if he were distrust- 
ful of ordinary changes, he was still more opposed to civil war: and 
from revolution he absolutely recoiled. Hence in regard of the 
great legislative measures which paved the way for the Revolution, 
he was invariably found in the negative. He opposed Henry's 
resolutions against the stamp act. He opposed, as has just been 
said, the scheme of weakening the influence of the Speaker of the 
House of Burgesses by rendering the office of Treasurer incompati- 
ble with that of Speaker, — a measure which the liberal party main- 
tained on the ground not only of diminishing the patronage of the 
Speaker, who, though elected by the Burgesses, was approved by 
the Governor, but of keeping the Treasurer more within the reach 
of the House. He opposed, in the Convention of March, 1775, the 
resolutions of Henry for organizing the militia, preferring to consult 
the chapter of accidents yet longer before he upheld an unequivocal 
act of opposition to the royal authority. But there was a manliness 
about him which made him scorn to sneak or skulk in a time of 
trial. Cautious and even skittish in the early stages of a great 
measure, when it was adopted, he acquiesced in the decision. His 
habits of mind insensibly attached him to the new state of things ; 
and he was most efficient in carrying out the details of a policy 
which he had strenuously opposed in debate. Hence, as his inte- 
grity was beyond suspicion, and, as his abilities were held in the 
highest repute, he was called on, not by one party but by both par- 



48 EDMUND PENDLETON. 

ties, to fill all the great posts of the day, the duties of which he 
performed with masterly skill. He was one of the committee 
which in 1764 prepared the memorials to the House of Commons, 
to the House of Lords, and to the king.* He was appointed in 
1773 one of the Committee of Correspondence. He was appointed 
by the Convention in 1774 one of the delegates to Congress, and 
was rechosen in 1775, when from indisposition he declined the ap- 
pointment. He was a member of all the Conventions, having been 
called to preside in that of December, 1775, and in that of May, 
1776, of which we are now treating, and was at the head of leading 
committees until he was elected to the chair. But nothing could 
show more clearly the general confidence reposed in him than his 
unanimous election by the Convention of July, 1775, as the head 
of the Committee of Safety. That body consisted of eleven mem- 
bers, was, in the interval of the sessions of the Conventions, the 
executive of the Colony, and was always in session. Its duties 
were of the most delicate, of the most perplexing, and of the most 
responsible kind. There was no precise rule for its guidance. The 
ordinance which created it, endowed it with enormous powers posi- 
tive and discretionary.! Its difficulties were enhanced by the fact 
that the Colony was in a state of war. The utmost prudence, en- 
ergy and wisdom were required in its head ; and these qualities 
Pendleton possessed in an eminent degree. If the highest order of 
executive genius be not accorded him, he was unsurpassed in the 
readiness with which, at a time of great peril, he arrayed his 
means, and adopted a line of policy proper for the occasion. He 
was thoroughly conversant with the finances of the Colony, and, 
as he was skilled in figures, and had served an apprenticeship of 
four and twenty years in the House of Burgesses, everything ap- 
pertaining to its population and its resources was on the tip of his 
tongue. He had also a knowledge of the practical arts, which be- 
came important, as, in consequence of the non-importation acts, 
there was neither salt, nor gunpowder, nor arms, nor clothing in 
the Colony ; and it was one of the responsible duties of the com- 
mittee to examine the various proposals for the manufacture of 

* He did not draw either of them. The memorial to the House was written 
by Wythe ; the memorials to the king and to the lords by It. II Lee. Life of 
Lee, Vol. I, 29. 

t See the ordinance, page 44 of the Journal of the Convention, July, 1775. 
The wages of a member of the committee was fifteen shillings per diem. 



THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND COLONEL HENRY. 49 

those articles, and to decide upon them. He was not only versed, 
as heretofore stated, in our own acts of assembly and in the British 
statutes, but in the law of admiralty and in the laws of nations; 
and it is most pleasing to observe the courtesy which he was ready 
to extend to our enemies when justified by the public law. The 
army and navy were under the control of the committee; and it not 
unfrequently happened that grave questions of prize came up for 
adjudication. It was also charged with the domestic and foreign 
correspondence of the Colony. Such was the sphere of the com- 
mittee of which Pendleton was the head from its organization until 
it was superseded by the government established by the constitu- 
tion ; a position which he might well have declined, and which no 
man, who was not ready to la)' down his life in his country's cause, 
would have dared to assume. In that interval his conduct deserved 
and received the warmest approbation of his country. 

One single act of the committee excited in some minds a preju- 
dice against its head ; and justice to the memory of Pendleton de- 
mands a passing allusion to it. I allude to the difficulty that oc- 
curred between the Committee of Safety and Col. Henry. It cre- 
ated some excitement, and, indeed, exasperation at the time, and 
made an impression upon the Convention ; for on the ensuing elec- 
tion of the members of the committee the name of Pendleton, hith- 
erto easily the first, fell to the fifth place.* Wirt, and our histori- 
ans generally, are inclined to impute, directly or indirectly, unwor- 
thy motives to Pendleton ; and a cloud, which was dispelled almost 
as soon as it was formed, has been made to darken a reputation 
which it ought to be the pride of posterity to illustrate and to dwell 
upon with unmingled delight. That Edmund Pendleton and Patrick 
Henry were enemies, I do not affirm ; but that they were at the 
head of their respective parties at a time when their issues involved 
life and death, is known to all. The true nature of those parties 
will be traced elsewhere. Suffice it for the present to say, that 
Pendleton represented the great conservative interest of the Colo- 
ny, and that Henry personified the great body of the people who, in 
all countries and in all ages, are opposed to the few who wield the 
influence of government for their own advantage. Their opposition 
began as early as 1765, and was renewed at intervals until Henry 
was elected Governor and Pendleton, after passing a session or two 
* Journal Convention, Dec. 1775, page 68. 



50 THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND COLONEL HENRY. 

in the House of Delegates, was called to the bench. To all who are 
familiar with the character of Pendleton, it must be obvious that 
political animosity could never have impelled him to seek the de- 
struction of an opponent. Of all his favorite schemes of policy be- 
fore the Revolution, and of all his plans discussed in the House of 
Delegates under the new constitution, the most radical, the most 
skillful, the most uncompromising foe was Thomas Jefferson ; yet 
with Thomas Jefferson he lived in unbroken and ardent friendship 
for a third of a century, and it is from the pen of Jefferson that pos- 
terity will receive the most eloquent tribute to the integrity, moral 
worth, and patriotism of Pendleton. Nor could the success of Henry 
interfere in any respect with the ambition of Pendleton. The highest 
honors of the Colony were always within his reach ; and in passing 
from the Colony to the Commonwealth he not only did not lose his 
ground, but was placed in a loftier position before the country. He 
was, as chairman of the Committee of Safety, the supreme executive. 
The success of the arms of the Colony was the success of his own 
policy. To blast the fame, or to curb the spirit of an officer under 
his control, was virtually to prevent the increase of his own re- 
nown and to dim the glory of his own administration. The time 
when the difficulty occurred between them also demands attention. 
On the seventh of November, 1775, Dunmore issued a proclama- 
tion from the harbor of Norfolk placing the country under martial 
law, summoning all persons capable of bearing arms to his standard 
on the penalty of being denounced traitors, and inviting all servants 
bond and free to join him. He had subjected to his authority 
through hope or fear nearly the whole population in the vicinity of 
Norfolk. As he had a naval force sufficient to control the waters 
of the Colony, the most fearful results Avere justly anticipated. 
Slaves not only fled to his standard in great numbers, but were en- 
rolled in the ranks, and were stimulated to wage war against their 
masters. The few patriots in the Norfolk district, who cherished a 
love of their country, were overawed, and, in the event of resist- 
ance, would have been executed summarily on the spot. To give 
a prompt and decided check to a sway which threatened such dire- 
ful results, was a measure almost of life and death to the people. 
To repel the disciplined forces of Dunmore by a band of raw re- 
cruits might not be impossible ; but, to be possible, the troops must 
be led to the scene of action by a soldier who possessed not only 



THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND COLONEL HENRY. 51 

personal bravery but the highest military skill, and who was accus- 
tomed to deal with a wary foe. Nor should it be concealed that 
leading men in the tide-water counties were in the counsels of the 
enemy. Several prominent persons had been detected in their 
communications with Dunmore, had been arrested, and had been 
dispatched into the interior. A regiment could hardly receive its 
marching orders before the fact would be conveyed to Dunmore 
by his secret emissaries. Every facility was thus offered to the 
enemy for cutting off a detachment by surprize. Moreover, defeat 
was to be dreaded by the Committee of Safety not only in its im- 
mediate result as involving the fate of the army, but from its effects 
on the spirits of the people. To lead a force at that critical junc- 
ture, Col. Woodford, Henry's second in command, was highly 
qualified. He had been engaged in the Indian wars, and was a 
thorough master of the discipline necessary for an army about to 
pass through an enemy's country. He was accordingly detached 
from the command of Col. Henry by the orders of the committee, 
and dispatched with his regiment to the seat of war. His triumph- 
ant success justified the foresight of the committee. A victory 
achieved by a handful of raw militia, at the expense of one hun- 
dred killed and wounded of the enemy, two-thirds of whom were 
troops of the line, without the loss of a single man on our side, pro- 
claims the capacity of the officer who won it. We may readily 
imagine with what emotions Pendleton, who was president of the 
Convention as well as chairman of the Committee of Safety, com- 
municated to the former body the third day after the battle the dis- 
patch of Woodford detailing the victory at the Great Bridge, and 
announced to Woodford the unanimous vote of the Convention in 
honor of the victor. But to return to Col. Henry. He was brave 
and full of spirit, and was eager to occupy the post of danger ; but 
he was entirely destitute of military experience. He had probably 
never seen a regiment of regular soldiers even on the parade 
ground, and was wholly unacquainted with, if not averse from, that 
discipline which made them formidable. Nor was there time for 
preparation. The danger was instant and imminent. Such were 
the circumstances which induced the Committee of Safety to assign a 
separate command to Woodford, and to order him to report directly to 
itself. The same danger which rendered a separate command ne- 
cessarv, rendered it necessary that all communications from the 



52 THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY AND COLONEL HENRY. 

officer should be promptly received and attended to by the commit- 
tee which was always in session. Nor was the position of Col. 
Henry in this city void of danger. Dunmore, who held undisputed 
sway over our waters and was burning with revenge, might at any 
moment approach it from the York or the James, and seize upon 
those whom he might deem the ring-leaders in the rebellion. That 
the committee had a right to assign a separate command to Wood- 
ford none who will read the ordinance of its creation, and the com- 
mission of Col. Henry in which this right is distinctly stated,* will 
deny ; and the question for the decision of posterity is, whether the 
emergency of the times did not justify its exercise. 

But, let the question be decided as it may, the result cannot im- 
peach the integrity or the honor of Pendleton alone. He was one 
of the eleven who composed the committee. On a question touch- 
ing the true meaning of an act of assembly or the law of prize, the 
opinion of Pendleton would have had its proper weight with the 
body ; but, when the safety of the State or the honor of a soldier 
and a gentleman was involved, would George Mason, who had re- 
cently paid to Henry the most splendid compliment which one 
man of genius ever paid to another t ; would John Page, who alone 
of all the council of Dunmore refused to assent to the proclamation 
denouncing Henry ; would Richard Bland, Thomas Ludwell Lee. 
Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, William Cabell, Carter Braxton 
James Mercer, and John Tabb, have been guided at such a delicate 
crisis by feelings of envy towards a patriot, who, having distin- 
guished himself in the public councils, sought to win honor in ano- 
ther and more dangerous field ? On the contrary, if we are dis- 
posed to attribute the conduct of Pendleton and his associates to in- 
dividual jealousy, and to a desire to ruin the fortunes of a dreaded 
rival, would they not have adopted an opposite course, and have 
dispatched Henry, unacquainted as he was with war, through a 
hostile population to the sea-board, where the British forces, which 
had been recruited some days before by a reinforcement of regular 
troops from St. Augustine, were ready to receive him ? t 

* For commission see Journal Convention, July, 1775, page 25, and for ordi- 
nance page 44. 

t George Mason to Col. Cockburn, Va. Historical Register, Vol. Ill, 28. 

X I have heard at second-hand from a member of the Committee of Safety 
who was present at the time and bore his share of the responsibility of the 
measure, that the real ground of their action was the want of discipline in the 



THE CAREER OF PENDLETON. 53 

If I may seem to have dwelt too long, Mr. President, on this in- 
cident in the life of Pendleton, it must not be forgotten that, in the 
estimation, perhaps, of a large majority of readers, it has cast on 
the fair fame of an illustrious man a stigma which, I hope, I have 
shown to be wholly unmerited ; and that to preserve unstained the 
memory of an eminent citizen is a duty enjoined by a proper re- 
spect for the truth of history as well as by the more generous dic- 
tates of patriotism and affection. 

Distinguished as was this remarkable man as a lawyer, as a de- 
bater in the House of Burgesses, as the presiding officer of a delib- 
erative assembly, and as the virtual executive of Virginia during 
the perilous period in which she was passing from the Colony to 
the Commonwealth, he may be regarded as yet only in the begin- 
ning of his wonderful career. He was now in his fifty-fifth year, and 
as he had been engaged since his fourteenth, either in the wasting 
drudgery of a clerk's office under the old regime, in the fatigues 
and privations of an extensive practice in the county courts and at 
the bar of the General Court, and in the most responsible trusts 
ever committed to a representative, in all of which he performed 
his part with the strictest fidelity and honor, and with the applause 
of his country, and in the possession of an ample fortune, he might 
now have sought retirement with a becoming grace, and, closing his 
career with the extinct dynasty, might have left to the new gene- 
ration the direction of affairs ; and, doubtless, had he consulted his 
own inclinations, he would have retired upon his well-earned fame 

regiment under the command of Col. Henry. None doubted his courage or his 
alacrity to hasten to the field ; but it was plain that he did not seem to be con- 
scious of the importance of strict discipline in an army, but regarded his sol- 
l diers as so many gentlemen who had met to defend their country, and exacted 
from them little more than the courtesy that was proper among equals. To 
have marched to the sea-board at that time with a regiment of such men, 
would have been to ensure their destruction ; and it was a thorough conviction 
of this truth that prompted the decision of the committee. It was the general 
belief of the time that Woodford's men, had he been defeated, would have been 
given over for indiscriminate massacre by the black banditti which Dunmore 
had listed and armed. 

My authority is the late Col. Clement Carrington of Charlotte, son of Judge 
Paul Carrington, sen. Col. C. was at the battle of Eutaw where he was dan- 
gerously wounded, was a member of the House of Delegates in the interval be- 
tween the close of the war and the adoption of the federal constitution, was 
present at the Convention of 17SS, of which his father and elder brother were 
members, knew personally many of the eminent men of the times, and in his 
old age, his memory undimmed, delighted to recall the scenes in which he was 
a close and critical observer. I shall hereafter refer to his testimony, commit- 
ted to writing at the time, under the head of Carrington Memoranda. 



54 THE CAREER OF PENDLETON. 

and fortune, and spent the remainder of his life in honorable re- 
pose. But Pendleton had other views of public duty. He was yet 
to render most important service to his country and to win his most 
durable, if not his most brilliant, titles to the public regard. But 
of his subsequent course in the House of Delegates, in which he 
filled the chair of Speaker, mingling, however, in debate with abil- 
ity confessedly unrivalled,* and fighting the battles of a party that 
was insensibly dwindling away with a vigor most formidable to his 
opponents ; as a revisor of the laws which still bear the impress of his 
plastic handt ; as a member of the Convention of 1788, in which he 
presided, and in the debates of which he freely engaged ; and on 
the bench of the Court of Appeals in which he filled for yet a 
quarter of a century the highest seat, presiding with an ease and 
dignity rarely surpassed, with a fullness of knowledge and a readi- 
ness in its application, that received the unlimited respect of the 
bar as it inspired the universal confidence of the people, with an 
industry that quailed not even beneath the werght of fourscore 
years, and, above all, with a purity that, even in the most deli- 
cate case of his life — a case involving issues at once personal, 
religious and political — the faintest breath of censure never soiled, 
it is not within the scope of my present design to speak at large. t 

Having thus paid our respects to the president of the Conven- 
tion, let us contemplate some of those eminent men who brought 
their eloquence, their learning, their experience in public affairs, 
their pure and honest lives, and their glowing patriotism, to the 
support of their country in the hour of trial, and who up to this 
period had usually acted with the party of which Pendleton was 
the representative. Sir, if you will look immediately in front of 
the chair, a little to the left, you will see two aged men sitting side 
by side, one of whom had nominated Pendleton to the chair, and 
both of whom were cordial in his cause. They are among the old- 
est members of the body. Even Pendleton, who is now fifty-five, 
and had been for five and twenty years a member of the House of 

* "Taken all in all, he was the ablest man in debate I have ever met with." 
Jefferson's Memoirs, Vol. I, 30. 

t It was the opinion of Mr. Wickham, that the part performed by Pendleton 
in the revision of the Laws could be distinguished by its superior precision. So 
says Henry Lee in his review of the works of Jefferson. 

\ Pendleton died on the 28th of October, 1803. As it is my intention to pre- 
pare at the request of the Virginia Historical Society a discourse on the Con- 



THE CAREER OF PENDLETON. 55 

Burgesses, looks young beside them. What a reach in our history 
do the lives of those two men embrace ? They had seen Robert 
Carter of Corotoman, one of the original benefactors of this col- 
lege and one of its visitors, who filled the chair of the House of 
Burgesses, with the purse of the Colony, as was the wont, in his 
hand, and had presided in the Council; him, who from his acres 
which he counted by the hundred thousand, and from his slaves 
whom he counted by the thousand, was called " King Carter."* 
One of those old men was a grandson of the "King," and had been 
dandled on his knee. The age of either of those men added to the 
age of the "King," would cover the whole of one century and the 
third of another. The "King," as a boy of fourteen, had known 
Sir William Berkeley, had played on the lawn of Greenspring, and 
might have seen the aged cavalier when in search of health he em- 
barked for England to re-visit his rural home no more.f They had 
seen Holloway, the contemporary in his latter years of Sir John 
Randolph who has left us in his Breviate Book a capital sketch of 
his character, t who for fourteen years filled the chair of the House 
of Burgesses and also, for nearly the same time, held the purse of 
the Colony ; a soldier-lawyer— an Erskine by way of anticipa- 

vention of 1788, I shall not, as a general thing, trace at large the course of 
those members of the present Convention such as Pendleton, Wythe, Henry, 
Madison and others, who were also members of the Convention of 1788. but 
will in the main confine myself to that period of their lives when they took 
their seats in the present Convention. 

When I delivered this discourse, I was not aware of the existence of a por- 
trait of Pendleton; but I have been informed since that there is one at the resi- 
dence of Hugh N. Pendleton, Esq. in the county of Jefferson. I have also seen 
since a portrait of the Judge by Sully, just taken from a miniature, at the resi- 
dence in Richmond of Jacquelin P. Taylor, Esq., who intends to present it to 
the Virginia Historical Society. This portrait probably represents him as he 
was between sixty-five and seventy-five, and hardly justifies the glowing de- 
scriptions of his person which have come down to us ; but as Pendleton was 
unable to take any exercise on foot, nor at all except in his carriage, from his 
fifty-seventh year to the day of his death, much allowance must be made for 
his looks in old age. He is represented in a flowing powdered wig, with blue 
eyes, with a sharp face probably attenuated by age, and with thin compressed 
lips. It is the face of a clear, close thinker, rarely pestered by the exuberance 
of his imagination. Lest I may be thought to have spoken too warmly of his 
handsome appearance in early life, I refer for the truth of the existence of the 
tradition, among others, to the Hon. William C. Rives. 

* Robert Carter of CorGtoman died August 4, 1732, aged 69. He owned 
300,000 acres of land, and 1100 slaves. There is a portrait of him at Shirley. 
C. Campbell's Hist, of Va. 

f Sir William Berkeley died in London, and was buried at Twickenham 
July 13, 1677. 

X Sir John's sketch of Holloway may be seen in the Virginia Historical 
Register, Vol. I, 119; and a sketch of Sir John himself, by an able hand, may 
be seen in the same work, Vol. IV, 138. 



56 NORBORNE BERKELEY. 

tion — and, if not the rival of the modern in eloquence, quite his 
equal in the mystic cunning of the law, and may have heard him 
tell in his peculiar way of the battles which he had fought on Irish 
ground, before he reached Virginia, under the banners of good King 
William. They remembered the arrival of the ship which forty 
years before brought over Sir John Randolph with his patent of 
knighthood in his pocket, and the scandal to which it gave rise.* 
They had known Dinwiddie, who, having detected certain frauds 
in the customs of Barbadoes, had been transferred to Virginia as a 
fair field for the exercise of his discriminating powers, and they 
could recall the sly jests that were current on the occasion of his 
arrival in the Colony. They had seen and known intimately the 
gay and gallant Fauquier, who, we are told, was the most accom- 
plished statesman who ever filled the chair of Governor, had sat at 
his classic board, had attended his brilliant entertainments, had of- 
ten received him as their guest and played with him his favorite 
game of whist, and had led the deliberations of the House of Bur- 
gesses during his administration. But, above all, they would have 
told of Norborne Berkeley, whose votive statue now guards your 
grounds, of his dazzling first appearance in this city in a chariot — a 
present from the king — drawn by six milk-white steeds, and, what 
was quite a topic of interest with our fathers, of the stock from 
which those steeds were sprung ; of his graphic descriptions of the 
scenes in the House of Commons when the sway of Sir Robert 
Walpole yielded at last to the terrible assaults of the opposing host, 
and which he had seen in his early manhood ; of the eloquence of 
Pitt before the coronet had clouded the spirit of the great Com- 
moner, and of the unrivalled glory of his administration ; of his 
own protracted contest for the barony of Botetourt which he had 
then but lately won ; of his affection for your college displayed not 
only by his punctual attendance on her ministrations, but by the 
gold and silver medals which he had struck off at his own expense, 
and which he awarded to the successful votaries of literature and 
science in this very hall ; of his lamented death, and of his burial 
beneath the platform on which I stand ! How much could Rich- 
ard Bland and Robert Carter Nicholas have told of men and 
things that is lost forever ! 

* See letter of Gov. Page, Va. Hist. Reg. Vol. Ill, 143. The grandmother 
of Page was a daughter ofllobert Carter of Corotoman. 



RICHARD BLAND. 5*7 

Of these two distinguished men, whose names are so intimately- 
connected with our colonial history, Richard Bland was the elder. 
You see him as he rises from his seat, and as he walks to the door. 
His tall figure, as before observed, is bent with age; his deep blue 
eyes have lost their brightness ; and you infer rightly from his slow 
and studied gait that he is almost blind.* In some respects his fame 
surpassed that of most of his contemporaries. On the score of an- 
cestjy he could vie with the oldest families, as his forefathers, if 
not among the first, were among the earlier settlers in the Colony; 
and he could trace his blood in the field and in the council to the 
knights of the Edwards who had planted the lion of England above 
the lilies of France, and had shown their prowess in the wars which 
England waged in defence of the phantom, which so long held pos- 
session of the public mind, of building up on the continent of Eu- 
rope a British State. Nor was his name without a peculiar illustra- 
tion at home. He bore in his veins the kindred blood of that Giles 
Bland, who struck for liberty a century too soon, and who fell a 
martyr to the remorseless vengeance of Berkeley: and, as the blood 
of Pocahontas was mingled with his race, there was a propriety in 
his position as the guardian of the public rights. And that office- 
he performed with great ability. From his youth he was fond of 
books ; and passing through the curricle of William and Mary, of 
which institution he subsequently became an efficient visitor, en- 
tered the University of Edinburg, whence he returned home with a 
generous ambition to excel, and immediately devoted himself to 
those studies which bear upon the business of life. He was a fine 
classical scholar. You will observe on the title-page of his Inquiry 
into the Rights of the Colonies a noble passage from Lactantius. 
But his great learning lay in the field of British history in its largest 
sense ; and especially in that of Virginia. With all her ancient 
charters, and with her acts of Assembly in passing which for nearly 
the third of a century he had a voice, he was familiar; and in this 
department he may be said to have stood supreme. What John 
Selden was in the beginning of the troubles in the reign of Charles 
the first to the House of Commons, was Richard Bland to the House 
of Burgesses for thirty years during which he was a member. Du- 
ring that time on all questions touching the rights and privileges 

* "lam an old man, almost deprived of sight." Bland's speech in the Jour- 
nal Va. Convention of July 1775, page 15. 



58 RICHARD BLAND. 

of the Colony he was the undoubted and truthful oracle ; for, as 
was observed by Mr. Jefferson, he was as wise as he was learned. 
When a great occasion occurred, a tract from his pen was looked 
for and hailed as a chart of the times. He was returned from 
Prince George to the House of Burgesses at an early age, and he 
soon rose to the first rank. He was not, however, in the full sense 
of the term, an eloquent speaker ; for, although he spoke with the 
ability with which he wrote, and exhibited in his speeches the same 
vigor of logic and the same unequalled research, which mark his 
written compositions, he did not possess some of the qualities of a 
speaker, which, though possessed by ordinary men, are essential to 
all. His manner was not attractive to common observers ; and, as 
others hesitated for the want of something to say, so the very exu- 
berance of his resources not unfrequently checked the freedom of 
his utterance. But when a question arose deeply affecting the bu- 
siness and bosoms of the people, such was the imposing earnestness 
of his manner, such were the extent and accuracy of his research, 
so conclusive was his argumentation, all heightened by the convic- 
tion of his good sense and spotless integrity, that, though he lacked 
the sweet elocution of Pendleton and moved not in the stately 
inarch of his kinsman Peyton Randolph, he held from the begin- 
ning to the end of his speech the ear of the House. Still his claim 
of superiority above his contemporaries, fortunately for his fame, 
rests rather on his abilities as a writer than as a speaker. Hence, 
when any line of policy, any great truth, was to be impressed on 
the public mind, the task, from which both Pendleton and Randolph 
would have shrunk, was always assigned to him. His letter to the 
Clergy on the Two Penny Act, a theme which called forth the first 
exhibition of the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and which settled the 
public mind on the subject, written in 1760, is still extant. He 
wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connexion of the Col- 
onies with the parent country ; and, although it may be in some 
measure liable to the friendly criticisms of Mr. Jefferson, which, 
however, must be read with the allowance necessary in estimating 
the opinions of an ardent young man who was anxious to raise the 
public pulse to the beat of his own, and although it may not possess 
that polish which periodical writing has assumed in our times, con- 
tains sound doctrine enforced with great ability, and surpassed in 
the judgment of Mr. Jefferson the more celebrated Farmer's Letters 



RICHARD BLAND. 59 

written by Mr. Dickinson. And when at a later day the scheme of 
an American Episcopate, which had slept from the beginning of the 
century, was revived, he opposed it in a tract which may have led 
the House of Burgesses to condemn it forthwith, and to return its 
thanks to the opponents of the measure.* 

It is time to observe more minutely the steps in the career of 
this learned man and devoted patriot. He took his seat in the 
House of Burgesses about the year 1745, and remained a member 
until the Conventions assumed the direction of affairs, occupying a 
leading place on all the important committees. In 1760 he de- 
fended the Two Penny Act, taking the side of the Assembly and 
the people against the Clergy. In 1764 he opposed with great zeal 
on the floor of the House of Burgesses the Stamp Act of the British 
Parliament, and was one of the committee of nine which prepared 
the memorials to the Commons, to the Lords, and to the "King. The 
memorial to the Lords was long attributed to him ; but it is now 
known to have been written by R. H. Lee. In 1765, still confiding 
in the potency of the memorials forwarded to England at the pre- 
vious session, he opposed the resolutions of Patrick Henry. In 
1766 he published his Inquiry into the Rights of the Colonies, in 
which the whole subject was discussed for the first time with that 
force of logic and fullness of illustration which we have already al- 
luded to, and which not only sustained his reputation as the ablest 
writer in the Colony, but materially assisted in bringing about a 
right understanding upon the subject in question. This tract won 
for its author the warmest and most grateful applause. Among the 
congratulatory letters which he received, he was deeply touched by 
the one written by the Norfolk Sons of Liberty; and his answer 
may be referred to as a graceful specimen of the courtesy and pa- 
triotism of the period. t In May 1769, when the House of Bur- 

* This pamphlet I have not seen, nor can I trace any recognition of it in the 
written and printed authorities within my reach ; but I am told by Gov. Taze- 
well that Col. Bland did write a tract against the Episcopate. That he was op- 
posed to the scheme is shown by the fact that the House of Burgesses deputed 
K. H. Lee and himself to return its thanks to Mr. Henley, Mr. R. Gwatkin, 
Mr. Hewitt, and Mr. William Bland, clergymen, for their open and decided op- 
position to the scheme. See Journal House of Burgesses 1770, and Burk Vol. 
Ill, 365. Col. Bland also wrote a tract on the tenures of land in Virginia which 
I have heard Gov. Tazewell say he had read before his examination for his li- 
cense to practice law, and which stood him in good stead. Bancroft makes a 
respectful recognition of Bland's Inquiry, Vol. V, 442-3. 

| The original is in the archives of the Norfolk Clerk's Office, and a printed 
copy, which was furnished to the Literary Messenger by Otway Barraud Esq. 
may be found in one of the earliest volumes of that work. 



60 RICHARD BLAND. 

jesses was dissolved by the Governor, and the members composing 
it assembled at the Raleigh, and prepared a series of resolves on 
the subject of economy and non-importation, he was among the first 
to sign the agreement; and when in June of the following year the 
House again adjourned to the Raleigh, and drafted in connection 
with the merchants and the citizens generally resolutions still more 
stringent, his name appears among the first inscribed on the roll.* 
In 1773 he was appointed one of the Committee of Correspon- 
dence, and in August 1774 he was a member of the first Virginia 
Convention, which was held in this city, and was chosen one of the 
seven delegates to the Congress about to meet at Philadelphia, and 
was re-elected till August 1775, when he declined in a touching 
address to the Convention, of which he was also a member, ex- 
pressing his grateful acknowledgments of the repeated honors which 
it had conferred upon him, and declaring "that this fresh instance 
of their approbation was sufficient for an old man, almost deprived 
of sight, whose greatest ambition had ever been to receive the plau- 
dit of his country whenever he should retire from the stage of pub- 
lic life." The Convention consented to accept his declination by a 
resolution in these words : " Resolved, unanimously, That the thanks 
of this Convention are justly^ due to Richard Bland, Esq., one of 
the worthy deputies who represented this Colony in the late Conti- 
nental Congress, for his faithful discharge of that important trust, 
and this body are only induced to dispense with his future services 
of the like nature on account of his advanced age." When the re- 
solution was adopted, the president, his ancient friend, whom we 
have just pointed out as sitting by his side, Robert Carter Nicholas, 
rose from the chair, and expressed to Col. Bland in glowing lan- 
guage the high sense entertained by the House of his character, 
and of the services which he had rendered to his country. On the 
organization of the Committee of Safety in July 1775 he was ap- 
pointed one of its members, and in December of the same year he 
was a member of the Convention which sat in Richmond, as he 
had been a member of that of March 1775, when he opposed the 
resolutions of Col. Henry for organizing the militia, and sustained 
the substitute offered by Col. Nicholas. In the Convention of May 
1776, which was now sitting, he appeared, as usual, as a delegate 

* The agreement of 1769 was written by George Mason, who was not a mem- 
ber of the House of Burgesses, nor present in Williamsburg, when it was 
adopted ; and was brought to the city by Washington. 



ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. Gl 

from Prince George, where, at his estate called Jordan's, he spent 
nearly the whole of his life. He was placed on every important 
committee, and had the honor of belonging to that which reported 
the Declaration of Rights, and the Constitution. Thus was his name 
inseparably connected with every great measure in the history of 
the Colony for almost half a century. He saw the name of Colony 
sink down and that of the Commonwealth rise in its stead ; but it 
was not the will of Providence that he should behold the close of 
the great contest in defence of those rights of which he was the 
earliest and ablest asserter, or catch even a transient glimpse of the 
glorious future which awaited his country. He died while on a 
visit to this city at the residence of his friend John Tazewell, on 
the 28th of October, 1776, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and 
within three months from the adjournment of the Convention.* 

The fate of Robert Carter Nicholas was more fortunate. He 
lived to take his seat in the House of Delegates under the new con- 
stitution, which he filled for several successive years, and to sit on 
the bench of the new judiciary, to hail the successes of his friend 
Washington at Trenton and Princeton, and to swell that chorus of 
joy which rang out from every hill-top and spread through every 
valley, when the victory of Saratoga, sealing the fate of the fearful 
hosts of Burgoyne, was proclaimed over the land ;t but he did not 
live to see, as he might almost have seen, from his own door, the 
proud banner of England trailing in the dust, and to behold his be- 
loved country take her place in the commonwealth of nations. He 
was brought up to the law, soon rose into eminence, and became 
one of the leading counsel at the bar of the General Court, when 
that bar was radiant with the genius and eloquence of Peyton Ran- 
dolph, Wythe, Pendleton, Thomson, Mason, Henry, and John Ran- 
dolph the Attorney General. While yet a young man he was re- 
turned from James City to the House of Burgesses, and remained a 
member of the body until it gave place to the new system. From 
1764 to 1776 he was a conspicuous member of the party of which 
Richard Bland, Peyton Randolph, and Pendleton were prominent 

* Virginia Gazette of the date. He was stricken with apoplexy while walk- 
ing the streets of this city, and was carried to Mr. Tazewell's. Bland and Taze- 
well married sisters, I believe. 

t It is necessary to look over the private letters of our public men written at 
the time to estimate the importance of the victory at Saratoga, and to realize 
the joy with which it was received. 



62 ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 

leaders, and in 1765 voted against the resolutions of Henry. We 
must be careful to discriminate between the party to which Nicho- 
las belonged and the party which was bound soul and body to the 
throne. It is true that the latter always voted with the former, and 
did not assume a separate shape until hostilities began; yet there 
was a clear line of distinction visible at all times between them. 
There were in fact three great parties in the Colony : the friends 
of British rule under all circumstances ; the friends of British rule 
when that rule did not impinge on the rights and franchises of the 
Colony ; and the radical party, which, though it did not openly 
propose or desire independence, displayed a determination to resist 
so far that either a repeal of the obnoxious acts or hostilities 
would inevitably ensue. The first mainly consisted of wealthy 
planters, who lived upon their plantations in a style of baronial 
splendor, who idolized British institutions, whose magnificent es- 
tates were bound up in the law of entails, and who might lose all 
but could not in their estimation gain any thing by civil commo- 
tions ; and of this party John Eandolph, the Attorney General, who 
went off with Dunmore, was the head. The second ranked among 
its members the most intellectual men in the Colony, almost all the 
eminent lawyers, a body of men, who, in all the great civil contests 
in England, had, as a class, usually leaned to the side of liberty, 
the prominent physicians, and the aspiring young men, who, in 
view of public life, had studied history in the spirit of philosophy, 
and the wide-spread connexions of these three important descrip- 
tions ; and of this party Pe} r ton Randolph, the brother of the Attor- 
ney General, was commonly regarded the head. The third was 
made up of a class of men, young, active, intelligent, and brave, 
and, for the most part, in moderate circumstances, living mainly in 
the interior; who had long observed with jealous eye that policy 
which bestowed all the political honors of the Colony upon the off- 
shoots of a few wealthy families living upon tide or on the banks of 
the larger streams ; who were becoming more and more hostile to 
a church establishment the severe pressure of which they were be- 
ginning sensibly to feel ; who already endured a weight of taxation 
which, though the ordinary expenses of government and a debt of 
between two and three millions, contracted principally on account 
of the French and Indian wars, rendered it neoessary, was oppres- 
sive ; and who were ready, sooner than endure fresh taxes from 



ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 63 

abroad or acknowledge the right to lay them, to resist at every 
hazard ; and of this party Patrick Henry was the head.* Nor is it 
necessary for the purposes of history to assail the integrity or the 
patriotism of either of the three great parties. Under similar cir- 
cumstances the same parties would rise to-morrow ; and nothing 
would be more unphilosophical than to judge of the wisdom or the 
worth of men from the failure or success of any line of policy which 
on the occurrence of any great emergency they may be induced to 
adopt. In the contest of the Revolution the right was on our sjide, 
but the power was on the part of Great Britain. All the probabili- 
ties of successful resistance were against us. If the two countries 
had been left to their individual exertions, the result would have 
been extremely doubtful. The fires of civil war, now smouldered, 
now raging, would have out-lasted the generation which kindled 
them. But for the liberal aid of foreign nations, and of France in 
particular, the eighteenth century, like the preceding one in the 
old world, would have beheld a thirty years' Avar in the new. That 
the Colonies would have borne up in the contest for a long time is 
probable ; but those who know that portion of the secret history of 
the times which has come down to us, are aware that there were 
moments when statesmen, who were the boldest in denouncing the 
usurpations of Parliament, quailed before the difficulties which 
threatened to overwhelm them, and talked, it is said, of a separate 
peace with the enemy. The history of the cost of the Revolution 
in blood and treasure has not been written and never can be writ- 
ten. And if, in the contemplation of such imminent risks, some of 
the colonists, instead of incurring them, were disposed to postpone 
the struggle altogether, let us thank God who over-rules the actions 
of men and who crowned that fearful contest with peace and inde- 
pendence, for the blessings which we enjoy, and let us show our 
gratitude, not by impugning the motives of those who differed from 
our fathers, but by seeking to diffuse as widely as possible peace and 
good- will among men. 

But Robert Carter Nicholas requires no allowance to be made for 
him. He was as ardent a patriot, he was as ready to incur great 
risks, as any one of his contemporaries ; but the distinguishing 

* I have heard Ex-President Tyler say, on the authority of his father, that 
the supporters of Henry's resolutions against the stamp act were called Old 
Field Nags, and the opposers of them were styled High-blooded Colts. 



64 ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 

feature of his policy was to put the British government as far as 
possible in the wrong. Thus, though he entirely approved of the 
doctrines of Henry's resolutions against the stamp act, yet, as he 
was anxious that the three memorials to the Commons, to the Lords, 
and to the King, which had been carefully prepared at the prece- 
ding session, should produce their full effect on those to whom they 
were addressed, he voted against their adoption. Thus, when 
Henry, in the Convention of March 1775, proposed his resolutions 
for an organization of the militia, Nicholas, deeming the measure 
premature, opposed them ; but when he saw that the temper of the 
House was bent upon military preparation, he brought forward a 
scheme which displayed the highest degree of wisdom and fore- 
sight, and which, had it been adopted, would have saved hundreds 
of lives and millions of treasure ; — a scheme for raising a regular 
army of ten thousand men to serve during the war. If this policy 
had been successful, Norfolk would not have been reduced to 
ashes ; the invasions which disgraced our State would have been 
repelled ; our negroes, one-fifth of whom, if not more, were irre- 
coverably lost, would have been preserved ; and millions of pro- 
perty, which was destroyed by mere handfulls of British soldiers, 
would have been saved. Short enlistments were the bane of the 
Revolution ; and we cannot accord too much credit to Nicholas, 
who at the outset saw the difficulties of the period, and suggested 
such an admirable scheme for preventing them. He enjoyed the 
confidence of all parties. He was elected to all the responsible 
trusts not incompatible with his office of Treasurer, to which he had 
been appointed in 1766, when it was for the first time separated 
from that of Speaker, and which he still held. In 1769 and 1770 
he was among the foremost signers of the non-importation agree- 
ments. In 1773 he was a member of the Committee of Corres- 
pondence ; but, as the duties of the Treasury confined him to the 
Colony, he was not deputed to Congress. He was a member of all 
the Conventions, and of the Convention of July 1775, on the retire- 
ment of Peyton Randolph, he was elected President pro tempore. 
He was elected to the House of Delegates under the new constitu- 
tion, and showed the regard which he cherished toward Pendleton by 
nominating him to the chair ; — a nomination that was unanimously 
confirmed ; and was successively re-elected and served during the 
sessions of '77, '78, and '79, when he was appointed one of the 



ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 65 

judges of the High Court of Chancery, and necessarily became a 
judge of the Court of Appeals. When it was decided at the first 
session of the House of Delegates that a person holding the office of 
Treasurer could not hold a seat in the House, choosing at his ad- 
vanced age to be relieved of a responsibility which he had so long 
and so faithfully borne, and to retain his seat, he resigned that 
office, the House declaring by an unanimous vote its high apprecia- 
tion of the fidelity and ability with which he had discharged its 
duties. 

His personal appearance was not as imposing as that of his kins- 
man Peyton Randolph or that of his compatriot Bland. Not above 
the middle stature, his features rather delicate than prominent, and 
inclined to be bald, he commanded attention rather by the gravity 
of his demeanor and from his great reputation than by any mere 
physical qualities. He was a strong and ready rather than an elo- 
quent speaker, a sound lawyer, a good financier, and a wise states- 
man. Some of the popular expositions put forth by the early Con- 
ventions, and many of their elaborate ordinances, are from his pen. 
The stirring appeal to the people known as the Declaration of the 
thirteenth of December 1775 is believed to be the work of his hand.* 
Some of his writings in the archives of his family, as stated b}' 
Call, indicate literary talents of a high order. t Educated at Wil- 
liam and Mary, of which he became one of her most stedfast friends 
and visitors, his whole life was spent almost within the shadow of 
her walls. What may seem trivial now, but what was of essential 
service in his time, he was intimately connected with the wealthi- 
est and most influential families in the Colony. His name he de- 
rived from that Robert Carter already alluded to, who was the Pre- 
sident of the Council as early as 1726, and whose portrait, painted 
more than a century and a half ago, may yet be seen in the par- 
lors of Shirley. 

In the House of Delegates under the new constitution he opposed 
the separation of the Church from the State ; nor was that great ob- 
ject fully attained until some years after his translation to the 
bench. And here it should be distinctly observed that in forming 
an opinion of the conduct of our fathers, we should be careful to see 

* Journal Convention, 1775, December, page 63. 

f See a sketch of Nicholas in the preface of fourth Call. 
5 



66 ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 

the great questions of their day from the point of view from which 
they beheld them. They loved the forms, the liturgy, and the doc- 
trines of the Episcopal church ; but, great as was their attachment 
to these, it did not wholly influence them in opposing a divorce of 
the church from the state. They regarded the subject not by the 
hopes of the future but by the lights of the past ; and that past was 
written in blood. Some of the purest professors of the reformed 
faith had been burned at the stake, had been suspended from gib- 
bets, and had had their heads struck off at the block. And some of 
the patriots of the Revolution believed that the means which in 
their view had prevented for a century the shedding of Protestant 
blood on account of religion in the Old World, would be the safest 
to accomplish the same end in the New. Hence they were op- 
posed to a separation of the Church from the State without a greater 
decree of reflection than could then be afforded. Nor was this 
pause desired by any regard of the questions of majority or mi- 
nority. When we recently beheld the Church of Scotland quit the 
elevated platform which for centuries she had held, and assume an 
independent and antagonistic position to the State, there was a 
shout of exultation from the lovers of religious freedom throughout 
Christendom ; but it was soon seen that the leaders in that great 
movement, so far from embracing the true notions of religious 
liberty which we hold in this countiy, strongly insisted that it was 
the duty of the State to uphold an establishment. They were 
ready to defend the Church of Scotland against the encroachments 
of the State ; but, so far from desiring a divorce from it, they main- 
tained with equal zeal the obligation of the State to sustain the es- 
tablishment. When we reflect that in the full blaze of the nine- 
teenth century the capacious mind of Chalmers had not embraced 
the doctrine of a separation, we may well excuse any momentary 
hesitation on the part of some of our patriot fathers. The great 
party of which Nicholas was a member, however prompt in resist- 
ing aggression from without, were cautious in remodelling the do- 
mestic policy of the State when a civil war was raging in the land. 
The conservative influence of those men was of incalculable value 
to their country.* Let those who are inclined to blame their caution 
in adopting radical changes in a time of extraordinary peril, and 
who approve of what are now called the peculiar institutions of the 



ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 67 

South, keep in mind that but for these very men those institutions 
might not have survived the last century.* 

Mention has already been made of his election to a seat on the 
bench ; but he had hardly entered on its duties, when he was taken 
suddenly ill and died at his seat in Hanover in 1780 in the sixty- 
fifth } r ear of his age. Now that death has put a seal upon his fame, 
the social character of this estimable man appears in the most en- 
dearing light. He loved indeed a particular form of religion, but 
he loved more dearly religion itself. In peace or war, at the fire- 
side or on the floor of the House of Burgesses, a strong sense of 
moral responsibility was seen through all his actions. If a resolu- 
tion appointing a day of fasting and prayer, or acknowledging the 
Providence of God in crowning our arms with victory, though 
drawn by worldly men with worldly views, was to be offered, it 
was from his hands that it was presented to the House, and from 
his lips came the persuasive words which fell not in vain on the 
coldest ears. Indeed such was the impression which his sincere 
piety, embellishing as it did the sterling virtues of his character, 
made upon his own generation, that its influence was felt by that 
which succeeded it ; and when his youngest son near a quarter of 
a century after his death became a candidate for the office of At- 
torney General of the Commonwealth, a political opponent, who 
knew not father or son, gave him his support, declaring " that no 
son of the old Treasurer can be unfaithful to his country." Nor 
was his piety less conspicuous in a private sphere. Visiting on 
one occasion Lord Botetourt, with whom he lived in the strictest 
friendship, he observed to that nobleman : " My lord, I think you 
will be very unwilling to die ;" and when asked what gave rise to 
the remark: "Because," said he, "you are so social in your na- 
ture, and so much beloved, and have so many good things about 
you, that you must be loth to leave them." His lordship made no 
reply; but a short time after, being on his death-bed, he sent in 
haste for Col. Nicholas, who lived near the palace, and who instantly 

* That George Mason, Wythe, Jefferson, Pendleton and others would have 
voted for emancipation is beyond a doubt. Mr. Jefferson not only proposed 
the measure in the House of Burgesses, but prepared a plan, which was agreed 
upon by the revisors, to be offered as an amendment to one of the revised bills 
when it came up in the House. George Mason in giving his reasons for voting 
against the Federal Constitution in the Convention which framed it, enume- 
rates the clause which allowed the introduction of slaves from abroad for a lim- 
ited period, contending that slavery was a source of weakness to a nation. 



G8 ROBERT CARTER NICHOLAS. 

repaired thither to receive the last sighs of his dying friend. On 
entering his chamber, he asked his commands : " Nothing," replied 
his lordship, "but to let you see that I resign those good things 
which you formerly spoke of with as much composure as I enjoyed 
them." After which, he grasped his hand with warmth, and in- 
stantly expired.* And none could have performed with more ap- 
propriate feeling than Nicholas the task which the House of Bur- 
gesses devolved upon him and his associates, of procuring that 
statue to the memory of his friend which so long adorned the area 
of the capitol, and which now fitly stands within the limits of this 
college which in life the original so dearly loved. f 

If this true patriot shared the fate of Peyton Randolph and Rich- 
ard Bland, and departed not only before he saw the close of the 
contest in which he was engaged but when the gloom was darkest, 
he bequeathed to his country the influence of his great name and 
a noble heritage of sons, educated within these walls, one of whom 
was distinguished during the Revolution in the field and in the 
council, was a leading member of the Convention which ratified 
the federal constitution, was a member of the House of Delegates 
whose deliberations he almost entirely controlled, leaving an im- 
press upon our laws which has been felt in our own generation, 
and became the law-giver of a new commonwealth then rising in 
the west, and all of whom filled the most responsible public sta- 
tions with fidelity and honor. t 

And now, Mr. President, we are about to pronounce a name 
which is inseparably connected with your College from its birth 
almost to the present hour, which is bound up with the history of 

* This incident is taken nearly verbatim from the 4th volume of the new edi- 
tion of Call's Reports. 

f The committee charged by the House of Burgesses to procure the statue Jj 
consisted of William Nelson, Thomas Nelson, Peyton Randolph, Robert C. ^-J 
Nicholas, Lewis Burwell and Dudley Digges. Journal H. of B. 1770J7 MpW*^' L> 

\ Col. Nicholas died at his seat in Hanover, leaving feur sons ; George, allu- 
ded to in the text, who removed to Kentucky where he died in 1799 ; John, 
who removed to New York and was a member of Congress from that State ; 
Wilson Cary, who was a member of the House of Representatives and of the 
Senate of the United States, and Governor of Virginia ; and Philip Norborne, 
called after Norborne Lord Botetourt, who was for many years Attorney Gen- 
eral of the Commonwealth, President of the Farmers' Bank of Virginia, a mem- 
ber of the Convention of 1829-30, and a Judge of the General Court ; all of 
whom are now dead. The father of Robert Carter Nicholas was Dr. George 
Nicholas, who emigrated to the Colony at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and married the widow Burwell whose maiden name was Carter. » ^ 



yy\ &/%/\st4^C^m \^ek^t^i^t** 



ROBERT CARTER NICIIOLAS. 69 

this city, and which shone for more than a century with equal 
glory in the Colony and in the Commonwealth. You see him who 
bears it sitting within that group from which we have singled out 
Nicholas and Bland, for; as in a memorable body of a later day, 
and as is usual in the British parliament, the customs of which 
were closely copied in the Colony, those who thought and acted 
with each other occupied adjoining seats; but he is a much younger 
man than either of them. He is in his forty-fifth year, tall and 
graceful in person, his face, if not strictly handsome, beaming with 
intellect and benevolence, and full of that modesty, which, if it be 
not the unerring: mark of genius, is one of its most becoming and 
most winning attendants. He occupied a seat that had immemo- 
rably been filled by some of the greatest men in the Colony ; for 
he was with peculiar propriety the representative of this College 
in that august body. If we were to pronounce on the descent of 
a man by the test of the genius, the virtue, and the piety of his an- 
cestors, his birth was more illustrious than that of any other mem- 
ber. He was descended from the stock of that remarkable man, 
who as early as 1685 came over to the colony as a missionary, who 
was afterwards appointed commissary of the Bishop of London 
within whose diocese Virginia then was, and who was by virtue of 
his office a member of the Council and for a long period its presi- 
dent, and whose benignant face may still be seen in his portrait 
suspended from the walls of your Blue Room. But all these ho- 
nors, and they were such that satisfied the highest ambition of the 
proudest spirits in the colony, sink into insignificance beside that 
which was in every sense of the word particularly his own — he 
was the Father of the College of William and Mary. He obtained 
her charter; he procured her benefactions ; his gentle hand rocked 
her cradle ; he was her first president ; and when in 1743, at an 
age far exceeding the period of the Psalmist, and after sixty years' 
service in the Christian Ministry, he breathed his last, closing his 
great mission here — in your midst — one of his latest aspirations 
to the Father of Mercies was that He might take his favorite off- 
spring under the shadow of his wing. Nor was this great man the 
only worthy ancestor of the representative of this College in the 
Convention. His father inherited the sound sense, the manly 
piety, and the self-denying patriotism of our Christian Patriarch, 
whom he succeeded in the Council, of which he was for a long 



70 JOHN BLAIR. 

series of years the president, and for the duties of which he was 
qualified by an efficient service in the House of Burgesses of 
which he was a member from this city as early as 1736. The pe- 
riod of his presidency in the Council was one of uncommon diffi- 
culty ; but in his correspondence with Col. Clement Read of Lu- 
nenburg he displayed a self-possession, a command of expedients, 
and a love of country throughout the troubles with the Indians 
who infested the remote outskirts of that region, which were wor- 
thy of high praise.* A descendant from the author of the dis- 
courses on the sermon of our Saviour on the Mount could not well 
be the persecutor of Christian men ; and we accordingly find in his 
letter to the attorney of Spottsylvania, which he wrote as acting 
Governor which he became on the death of Fauquier, he manifes- 
ted a spirit of toleration as rare at that day as it was creditable to 
his head and to his heart.t But great as was the ancestral honor 
which preceding generations reflected on your representative in 
the Convention, his personal merits would have earned him an 
enduring fame. From the beginning of the difficulties with the 
parent country, John Blair, as was his venerable father, was al- 
ways on the side of the Colony. When he had finished his course 
of instruction at this college, he repaired to London where he pur- 
sued his legal studies diligently at the Temple, and was soon en- 
gaged in full business at the bar of the General Court. He en- 
tered the House of Burgesses at an early age, and was a member in 
1765, when on the ground maintained by Nicholas and Bland he 
opposed the resolutions of Henry. In 1769, when the House of 
Burgesses was dissolved, he was one of that patriotic band consisting 
of Washington, Bland, Nicholas, and others, which held a meeting 
in the Raleigh, and drafted the non-importation agreement already 
referred to ; and when in 1770 the House was again dissolved and 
the members again assembled in the Raleigh to revise and amend 
the articles of agreement, associating with themselves the mer- 
chants of the Colony, he was among them, and recorded his name 
on that roll where it will be read forever.t In this year he was 

* His original letters to Col. Read are in my collection. The letter to Spott- 
sylvania may be found in our histories, especially in C. Campbell page 139. 

t President John Blair died some two or three years before the declaration 
of independence, leaving a spotless name to his son. 

t Va. Hist. Register Vol. III. 17. 



JOHN BLAIR. fl 

appointed one of the executors of his friend Lord Botetourt. In 
the Convention now sitting he appeared as the delegate from the 
College of William and Mary, and was a member of the grand 
committee which reported the Declaration of Rights and the Con- 
stitution. He was destined to be the last of that long list of em- 
inent men who represented the College in the public councils, and 
it is a coincidence worth observing in the history of your institu- 
tion, that, as it received the privilege of sending a member to the 
House of Burgesses — a privilege which she used so wisely for more 
than eighty years — from the charter procured by James Blair, so 
she was to lose that privilege when represented by his distin- 
guished relative. That he fought gallantly in defence of his Alma 
Mater may be readily believed ; but, as the test questions were 
mainly settled in the committee before the constitution was reported 
to the House, all memory of the scene is lost. And, indeed, not a 
word of any debate that occurred in the House itself has come 
down to us, nor does the journal of the House show the character 
of any amendment that was offered to the constitution during 
the time it was under consideration. He was elected by the Con- 
vention a member of the Council, and when the judicial depart- 
ment under the constitution which he assisted in framing was es- 
tablished, he was elected a judge of the General Court of which 
he became Chief Justice, and on the death of Robert Carter Nich- 
olas in 1780, he was elected a judge of the High Court of Chan- 
cery, and by virtue of both stations become necessarily a judge of 
the first Court of Appeals ; and was one of the Court when the 
law requiring the judges of the Court of Appeals to act as judges 
of the inferior Courts Avas pronounced unconstitutional. Nor by 
his decisive conduct did he forfeit his popularity with the Assem- 
bly ; for he was appointed by that body a delegate to the Conven- 
tion which was about to assemble in Philadelphia for a revision of 
the Articles of Confederation. In that assembly he supported 
with Edmund Randolph and Madison what was called the Virginia 
plan in opposition to the New Jersey scheme which sustained the 
separate sovereignty of the States; and with Washington and 
Madison alone of all the delegates from Virginia voted for the 
adoption of the constitution by the body ; and, when the federal 
constitution was submitted for the ratification of Virginia, he was 
returned from the county of York to the Convention which was to 



72 JOHN BLAIR. 

decide upon it, and again voted in its favor. On the organization 
of the federal judiciary, he was appointed by Washington, be- 
tween whom and himself along and intimate friendship had subsis- 
ted, a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, discharg- 
ing the duties of the office with ability and dignity until near the 
time of his death in this city on the thirty-first of August, 1800, 
in the sixty-ninth year of his age. 

Honored, as he was, by the high offices which he held through 
a long course of public service, he shone with a lustre, if not more 
dazzling, more diffusive and more benign in private life. His 
mild virtues, illustrated by the highest mental qualities, inspired an 
affection and exerted an influence, which mere talents, however ex- 
alted, rarely effect, and which were sensibly felt, as they will ever 
be remembered, in the polished society of this city, of which he 
was for half a century one of the noblest ornaments.* Mr. Presi- 
dent, the time has come when the glory of him who builds a hos- 
pital for the relief of human woe for ages after the heart which 
prompted the deed, has ceased to beat, and of him who builds a 
college for the diffusion of the blessings of knowledge and piety 
among the people long after the hand which reared it has turned to 
dust, is deemed by the wise and the good greater than the glory of 
"him who taketh a city." My own maternal ancestors came from 
the same country from which came James Blair, and bore his name 
as I do now ; and if I thought that I had a drop of blood in my 
veins kindred with his own, I would not exchange it for the blood 
of the proudest knight that ever won his spurs on the fields of 
Cressy or Poictiers, or who with the lion-hearted Richard had 
gathered trophies beneath the ramparts of the Holy City.f 

I have alluded to the character of the society which so long adorned 
this city in the Colony and in the Commonwealth. It was such as was 
almost unknown in any other Colony and was rarely surpassed else- 
where. Sir, if we could raise by the wand of the enchanter the 

* The late St. George Tucker, the elder, writing to Wirt in 1813, speaks of 
Blair as " a model of human perfection and excellence," and as " a man of the 
most exalted and immaculate virtues." Kennedy's Life of Wirt, vol. I. 316. 

t The tomb of James Blair is at Jamestown ; that of John Blair and his wife 
Jean is in the church yard of this city. I am indebted to my young friend Wil- 
liam Lamb of Norfolk, now a student of William and Mary, for a knowledge 
of the fact that Commissary Blair bequeathed by his will now on record in the 
General Court at Richmond his estate to John Blair, the father of the John 
Blair of the Convention. 



JOHN BLAIR. 73 

social scenes which were enacted more than eighty years ago in this 
city, what a vision of high bearing, of gentle courtesy, of command- 
ing intellect, and of dazzling beauty, would charm the ravished sight ! 
The amiable Botetourt, destined to an early grave, is yet in vigor- 
ous health, and is holding one of his gay entertainments in yonder 
palace. He had recently received glad tidings from the mother 
country, and had communicated them to the Burgesses, who had 
responded to them in a spirit of conciliation and peace ; and every 
heart beat high with joy. You see him as he stands, with a smile 
on his face, at the head of his suite of rooms, arrayed in the cos- 
tume of his order, the arms of Britain and the arms of Virginia, 
drawn with all the honors of heraldic emblazonry, fondly in- 
tertwined and suspended above him, and as he extends to his 
guests the gratulating hand. His council, Burwell, Corbin, Brax- 
ton, Wormley, the younger Nelson, Page, the patriarch Nelson 
in their midst, are standing beside him ; and near him clad in 
their robes, the President of the College, John Camm, the succes- 
sor of Blair in the office of Commissary, and, as such, a member 
of the Council, celebrated for the zeal and ability with which he 
had long upheld in many a well-contested field the claims of his 
class, and his reverend associates Gwatkin and Henley, who were 
ere long to oppose the scheme of an American Episcopate so 
warmly cherished by their principal, and to receive the formal 
thanks of the House of Burgesses for their wisdom and courage. 
You see approach the elegant Pendleton, yet untouched by time, 
alike the pride of the bar, the light of the senate, and the grace 
of the social sphere, and you mark the impression which he makes 
as he salutes his noble host. You hear the cry of "The Speaker 
— The Speaker," — and you behold, bending low as he makes his 
obeisance, the stately form of Peyton Randolph, his queenly wife, 
who was ere long to weep in a distant city at the bedside of her 
dying husband, and to pay in this hall the last sad tribute at his 
grave, resting on his arm ; while the grave Treasurer, Robert Car- 
ter Nicholas, is at one hand, and the Clerk of the House, the 
modest Wythe, at the other. Whose, you inquire, is that com- 
manding figure, attired with scrupulous taste in the rich dress pf 
the period, that is just announced, and is approaching the host, 
his partner on his arm, her early beauty beaming still, and who 
was to share with her husband, ere that beauty faded, the purest 



74 JOHN BLAIR. 

fame that human virtue ever won, and who in the fullness of time 
was to place with her own hands the cypress on that sacred brow 
— the victor with armies yet unraised — the chief of an empire 
whose corner-stone was yet unlaid — the peerless model for the 
admiration of ages yet unborn — I need not name his name. Now 
behold the thick-coming throng of names which Virginia will never 
"willingly let die." The aged Bland, moving slowly, salutes the 
host, who advances to greet him ; Archibald Cary, his small sta- 
ture and delicate features veiling from the common eye the lion- 
spirit that burned within ; John Randolph the Attorney General, 
his noble form still erect, his cheek yet unmoistened with repen- 
tant tears; the brilliant brotherhood of Lees ; the sprightly Jef- 
ferson, his great Declaration and his greater statutes abolishing pri- 
mogeniture and entails and an established church yet unwritten ; 
John Tyler, the venerable Marshal of the Colony, supported by 
his son John, on whose youthful and honest face the Anglo-Saxon 
and the Huguenot seemed to struggle for the mastery ; * Carter, 
another descendant of a president of the Council, still bearing on 
his escutcheon the heraldic symbol whence he derived his name. 
Still — still they come ; — the Burwells, the Scotts, the Digges', Ca- 
bell of Union Hill, Peyton, Mayo, Carrington, Thompson Mason, 
Jones, Hutchings, Bassett, Read, Lewis, Woodson, Starke, Poy- 
thress, Barbour, Ball, Riddick, West, Newton, Walke, Cocke, Banis- 
ter, Baker, Moseley, Marable, Johnson, Gray, Wilson ; and conspicu- 
ous even in that gallant band was the benignant face of John Blair. 
But they came not alone. Would that I could draw aside the pall of 
time, and present to the view of their lovely descendants the mo- 
thers and daughters who shed their brightness and beauty over that 
fairy scene! The music sounds; and the courteous host leads off 
the dancing train; and the stately Randolph, the gay Pendleton, 
the gallant Washington, Innis, then in the dawn of his splendid fame, 
but in the fullness of his gigantic proportions, Richard Henry Lee, 
smiling as he offers his only hand to the fortunate fair, join in the 
mirthful dance. — But that dance is done — the last note of that de- 
licious music has died away — the scene is closed. Even the joy 
which it inspired, was short-lived. A profligate ministry had de- 
ceived the candid but credulous host ; and soon that crowd gath- 

* The young Tyler in the text is the father of the Ex-president. 



JOHN BLAIR. T5 

ered around his grave. — Years have passed, and the curtain rises 
once more. The vicegerent of the British king no longer dwells in 
his palace — he is gone — his very palace is in ruins — the sceptre of 
his king has been broken. The kingdom has passed away. The 
Republic has risen in its place and " beams herself " in all her 
beauty before us. New views and fresh feelings inspire the gene- 
ral mind. Liberty — Independence — Peace — Union — are the magic 
watch-words of the age. Again, assembled in this city, behold the 
gladsome throng. The blended arms of Britain and Virginia are no 
longer seen suspended from the wall. The portrait of the king, too, 
is gone ; but another is seen beside which the image of the proudest 
king that ever filled a throne grows pale. A familiar face it wa3 
and long had been in the streets of this city and at its firesides. 
But it was a face whose influence no familiarity could impair ; for 
it was the face of him who had led our armies in war, who had suc- 
ceeded in establishing a federal union, and who was in the first 
term of his first administration. Grateful tidings from abroad, 
which filled every breast with joy, had just been proclaimed. The 
sun of French liberty — too soon to set in blood — was seen on the 
edge of the horizon. As the people assemble, no lordly minion, in 
regal array, stands to receive their homage, but, in his stead, be- 
neath his own roof, the modest Blair extends the cordial welcome. 
Elevated, as he had been, to the highest honors of the federal judi- 
ciary, he wears not the simple robe of his office, but appears, as he 
was, without disguise, like justice herself, whose minister he was. 
Again the sound of music is heard. Wisdom, gallantry and beauty 
again move in the mystic mazes of the dance, or share in more se- 
rious mood the enthusiasm of the kindling scene. And that music, 
too, has died away; and all those brave men and lovely women 
have retired to their homes — and to their graves. But the memory 
of their genius and valor, of their social elegance, of their beauty 
and their worth, which diffused so long over this city their charm- 
ing influence and which is felt to this hour, still lives, and with that 
memory the image of Blair, as he appeared in private life, is in- 
separably inwoven.* 

Let me invite your attention, Mr. President, to a group of young 

* The reader who delights in recalling the images of the past will read with 
interest the graceful discourse of John R. Thompson Esq. founded on the Bote- 
tourt papers, which was published in the Messenger of the past year. 



76 EDMUND RANDOLPH. 

men who are conversing with each other near the door leading into 
the lobby. There are three of them you perceive. A casual 
glance discloses at once that two of them are rather above the mid- 
dle stature, while the third is much below it. Those three young 
men the observer, if he could have cast his prophetic eye to the 
close of the century, would have pronounced the most remarkable 
men in the body. Two of them had just taken their seats in a de- 
liberative body for the first time ; the third had been a member of 
the House of Burgesses at its last session. In their history is 
wrapped up the history of the most important epoch of the 
eighteenth century. The tallest of the three was the representa- 
tive of Williamsburg in the Convention. His noble stature, his 
handsome face, his imposing address, insensibly arrest the atten- 
tion. There was something of accident in his position that bespoke 
respect. He bore on his youthful shoulders the mantle of Wythe, 
who, having been chosen by the city of Williamsburg as its repre- 
sentative in Convention, was necessarily absent in the General Con- 
gress, and was represented by him as his alternate. His position 
was one of extreme interest to William and Mary ; for she well 
knew that the contest for the honor of sending a delegate to the 
Assembly, which she had so long and so worthily worn, was now 
approaching. There was a singular fortune in having such a friend 
at such a conjuncture. He had been educated within her walls, and 
his father, and his grandfather before him. The name of his great- 
grandfather was written in her original charter. All of them had 
gallantly sustained her interests, and had represented her at various 
periods in the House of Burgesses. Randolphs, from father to son, 
from generation to generation, she had counted among her favorite 
children. She lost her cause indeed, not from any want of ability 
in her advocates, but from controlling considerations of public 
policy which no eloquence might gainsay. Sir, I need not say that 
I allude to Edmund Randolph. He was in the twenty-third year 
of his age, and nearly six feet in height, and his manners were those 
of a man who had moved from boyhood in the refined society of the 
metropolis. His literary acquirements were of the highest order. 
The English classics he had studied with the closest attention, as 
some of his books still extant attest. He loved philosophy, and had 
dipped deeply into metaphysics which Scottish genius had then 
recently invested with peculiar interest ; and he loved poetry as a 



EDMUND RANDOLPH, 77 

kinsman of Thomas Randolph, the boon companion of Shakspeare 
and Ben Johnson, was bound to love it.* When a young relative, 
who was to wreathe their common name with fresh honors, was 
sent to study law with him, the first book which he put into his 
hands was Hume's " Treatise of Human Nature," and the next was 
Shakspeare. t He spoke with a readiness, with a fullness of illus- 
tration, and with an elegance of manner and of expression, that ex- 
cited universal admiration. Moreover, he was regarded as the 
most promising scion of a stock which had been from time imme- 
morial foremost in the Colony. No member could recall a time 
when a Randolph had not held high office. No man could remem- 
ber a time when a Randolph was not among the wealthiest of the 
Colony. A few old men had heard from their fathers that the origi- 
nal ancestor had some time beyond the middle of the previous cen- 
tury come over from Yorkshire poor, and made his living by build- 
ing barns;! but they also remembered his industr} r , his integrity, 
and his wonderful success in acquiring large tracts of land which 
he bequeathed to his children, and the political honors which he 
himself lived to attain. In the space of near thirty consecutive 
years, three of the family had filled the office of Attorney General. 
One had been the Speaker of the House of Burgesses for the past 
ten years. Nor was their success the result of the prestige of a 
name, and confined to the Colony. When Peyton Randolph ap- 
peared in the Congress of 1774, he was unanimously called to pre- 
side in that illustrious assembly. But Peyton had died seven months 
before, a martyr in the civil service of the country, and his brother 
John, the father of Edmund, the Attorney General, had adhered to 
the fortunes of Dunmore. This last circumstance, which might 
have cast a stain on the escutcheon of most young men, tended to 
the popularity of Edmund ; for it was believed that he not only re- 
fused to follow his father, but sought to dissuade him from leaving; || 
and he soon gave a hostage to fortune in leading to the altar a 
lovely and accomplished woman — a true whig — the daughter of 

* Sir John Randolph, the grandfather of Edmund, was a grand-nephew of 
Thomas Randolph the poet. Va. Hist. Register Vol. IV, 138. 

f Southern Lit. Messenger, February 1854. Article on the Randolph library. 

X Carrington Memoranda. 

|| He was disinherited by his father for refusing to adhere to the royal cause. 
Preface to the Vindication of E. Randolph, lately republished by his grandson 



78 EDMUND RANDOLPH. 

that stern old Treasurer who would have been the last man living 
to mingle the blood of his race with that of a traitor. Nor did the 
smiles of beauty afford the only guerdon of the brilliant triumphs 
that awaited him. He sought the camp of Washington, and became 
a member of his military family. The people of this city, as before 
observed, sent him to the Convention which was now sitting as the 
alternate of Wythe, and before the close of the year elected him 
their Mayor. The Convention itself conferred upon him the office 
of Attorney General under the new constitution ; and at a subse- 
quent session of the House of Delegates, he was appointed its clerk. 
His success at the bar was extraordinary. Clients filled his office, 
and beset him on his way from the office to the court-house with 
their papers in one hand and with guineas in the other.* In 1779 
he was deputed to the Continental Congress, and remained a mem- 
ber until 1782. In 1786 he was elected Governor by the General 
Assembly, and was chosen by the same body one of the seven dele- 
gates to the Convention at Annapolis, and in the following year to 
the General Convention which had been summoned to revise the 
Articles of Confederation. In 1788 he was returned by the county 
of Henrico to the Convention which was called to decide upon the 
federal constitution. In 1790 he was appointed by Washington the 
first Attorney General under the new federal system, as he had been 
the first Attorney General of Virginia — thus filling an office which had 
been hereditary for three generations in his family. In 1795 he 
succeeded Mr. Jefferson as Secretary of State ; an office which he 
held but for a short time, when he withdrew to private life, and re- 
sumed the practice of the law. His person, his mode of speaking, 
the caste of his eloquence, as these appeared in his latter years, are 
described by Wirt, and will live in the pages of the British Spy. 
He died in 1813 in the sixtieth year of his age. The history of this 
extraordinary man is the history of Virginia for the most interesting 
quarter of a century in her annals, and this history, although it has 
not yet seen the light, has been recorded by his pen.t Of all the 
spheres in which he moved, that in the Federal Convention held in 

* I heard this fact from an eye-witness. 

t Mr. Wirt saw and consulted it while he was writing his sketches of Henry; 
I am sorry to say that this history was destroyed by fire in New Orleans some 
years ago, while in the possession of the grandson of Edmund Randolph who 
resided in that city. The exact date of the birth of Edmund Randolph is 
August 10, 1753. 



HENRY TAZEWELL. 79 

Philadelphia will especially attract the attention of posterity. His 
career in that body was surpassingly brilliant and effective; and, 
although he ultimately voted against the adoption of the constitution 
by that body, that instrument may be said, perhaps, to bear more 
distinctly the impress of his hand than that of any other individual. 
Nor was his course in the Convention of ratification, in which he 
sustained the constitution, less imposing. ' But we must stop here. 
My present purpose has been to present him to your view as he 
appeared in the prime of early manhood as the delegate of Wil- 
liamsburg in the Convention of 1778, and that is accomplished.* 

Another member of that youthful group of which Randolph from 
his stature, and more developed form, was a prominent figure, was 
Henry Tazewell. He, too, was in the twenty-third year of his 
age, rather above than below the middle stature, and, though not 
as portly as Randolph, or as he himself subsequently became, pos- 
sessed a form of perfect symmetry, and was a model of manly 
beauty. He was descended from William Tazewell, who came 
over from Somersetshire in 1715, who married a daughter of Col. 
Southey Littleton, and who engaged in the practice of the law. 
His father, Littleton, resided in the county of Brunswick, where 
in 1753 Henry was born. He lost his father in early life, be- 
came a student of William and Mary, and studied law with his 
uncle John Tazewell, who was the clerk of the Convention 
then sitting of which he was now a member, and was soon 
admitted to the bar. Like Pendleton, he may be said hardly 
to have known a father's care, and, like him, married before he 
was of age ; and shared with him the misfortune of losing the 
bride of his youth in the short space of three years after their 
marriage. Her name was Dorothea Elizabeth Waller. Tradition 
has handed down to us a glowing picture of young Tazewell in the 
first flower of manhood. Fortunately an admirable portrait by the 
elder Peale sustains the impression which he made upon his con- 
temporaries. At the court of Elizabeth or of the second Charles, 
his mere physical qualities would have won his way to the highest 
offices in the State. His face was extremely beautiful. His 
bright hazel eye shaded by long black lashes, his nose of Greek 

* Edmund Randolph died on the twelfth of September 1813 in the county of 
Frederic, now Page, and was there buried. No true portrait exists of him. A 
silouette profile of his face is in the possession of one of his descendants. 



80 HENRY TAZEWELL. 

rather than of Roman mould, h's forehead full and high, his auhurn 
locks, parted at the foretop, and falling "not beneath his shoulders 
broad," presented a striking picture ; while the tints of his skin, 
partaking more of the Italian than the Saxon hue, bespoke, like 
his name, which, though assuming an English form, was of French 
origin, the foreign blood in his veins.* His carriage was altogether 
becoming, and blended the freedom of the cavalier with the more 
chastened demeanor of the scholar. But, however prepossessing 
as his personal appearance undoubtedly was,, none knew better 
than he that at a time when men's lives and liberties and those 
of their children were dependent upon the wisdom and courage of 
their representatives, other and far higher qualities were indis- 
pensable to a successful public career; and to attain such qualities 
had long been the scope of his ambition. He had thus prepared 
himself with the utmost deliberation for the scene which was now 
opening before him. In 1775, in the twenty-second year of his 
age, he was returned by his native county of Brunswick to the 
House of Burgesses, which was convoked to receive the concilia- 
tory propositions of Lord North ; and, with an alacrity that did 
him infinite honor, he prepared an answer in detail which was 
read and approved by Nicholas and Pendleton, but from a casual 
absence or from some trifling accident he was anticipated by Mr. 
Jefferson whose answer was ultimately adopted. That at so early 
an age he should have prepared with such promptness on so im- 
portant a question a paper which received the sanction of tw r o of 
the ablest members of the house, reflects the highest credit upon 
his intellect and his patriotism. In the Convention now sitting he 
appeared as a delegate from Brunswick, and, young as he was, was 
placed on the grand committee which reported the Declaration of 
Rights and the Constitution. He was regularly returned a member 
of the House of Delegates for some years under the new consti- 
tution until his elevation to the bench ; and it was in that school 
he earned some of his most precious titles to the esteem and grati- 
tude of his countrymen. Nor could a better school of statesman- 
ship have been found than the House of Delegates from the de- 

* The name is believed to have been spelt originally Tazouille, and those 
who bore it came over from France to England prior to the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. The portraits of Judge Tazewell and his wife are in the 
possession of his son Gov. Tazewell. The resemblance between the husband 
and wife is striking. 



HENRY TAZEWELL. 81 

claration of independence to the adoption of the federal constitu- 
tion. All the leading topics of a republican system, all the great 
measures of domestic legislation, were perpetually brought into 
view, and were discussed with extraordinary ability. The law of 
primogeniture, the law of entails, the expediency of a church es- 
tablishment, paper money, the payment of taxes in kind, the con- 
fiscation of British debts, the discrimination in regard of emi- 
grants, the mode and means of conducting the war, the expedi- 
ency of forming the Articles of Confederation, and, subsequently, 
of amending them, the regulation of commerce, the disposition 
of the public lands, stretching to the northern lakes in one di- 
rection and to the Mississippi in another; these were some of the 
subjects discussed at that time by the public men of the new Com- 
monwealth ; and it was in this school that the talents of Tazewell 
were displayed with such effect as to make a strong impression of 
his qualities as a jurist and as a statesman. 

It has been observed that Tazewell engaged early in the prac- 
tice of the law. He soon relinquished the ordinary county business, 
and confined himself to the General Court, at the bar of which he 
rose into eminence, and enjoyed a large and lucrative practice. 
Hence in 1785, at the early age of thirty-two, an age when others 
were in their noviciate at that bar, he was elected to a seat on its 
bench, and consequently became a member of the first Court of 
Appeals. In 1793 he was elected a member of the Court of Ap- 
peals now consisting of five judges; and in 1795 he was chosen a 
Senator of the United States, as the successor of John Taylor of 
Caroline, even though the name of his friend Madison was put in 
opposition to his own. 

The office of a Senator of the United States has always been 
held in high honor; nor is its importance likely to be diminished 
with the expansion of our territory and from the controlling po- 
sition which this country must ere long maintain among the na- 
tions of the earth ; but it would be improper to overlook the fact 
that the relative importance of the individual members was greater 
more than fifty years ago than it is at present, and that the body 
itself consisted of men of a higher order of talents than is now to 
be seen. The number of Senators was then small, hardly exceed- 
ing that of thi independence committee of the Convention now 
sitting, or of the committees on the legislative, executive, or the 
6 



82 HENRY TAZEWELL. 

judiciary department in the Convention of 1829-30, and did not ex- 
ceed thirty members. A single vote might be expected ordinarily 
to decide the most serious questions. A single vote would have 
rejected the treaty with Great Britain negotiated by Mr. Jay. 
Moreover, the time when Tazewell took his seat in the Senate, 
was one of unprecedented difficulty. It was indeed a sphere con- 
genial to his tastes and for which his career in the House of Del- 
egates and on the bench eminently qualified him ; still his position 
was peculiar and deeply responsible. He was the youngest mem- 
ber whom Virginia had yet sent to the Senate. As an American, 
and, above all, as a Virginian, he cherished the highest admiration 
and the warmest affection for that illustrious man who then pre- 
sided in the federal government ; yet, painful as the office was, he 
was constrained by his own sense of duty and by the known will 
of his constituents, to oppose the great measures of the adminis- 
tration. The question of the assumption act, and of the Bank of the 
United States, had already been settled ; but he was called upon 
immediately to consider the British treaty which the president had 
just communicated to the Senate, and to oppose its ratification 
with all his zeal. In the discussions on the merits of the treaty he 
bore a distinguished part, and proposed a series of resolutions em- 
bodying the principal objections to that instrument, which involved 
one of the most memorable debates in our history, and which were 
ultimately lost by a vote of twenty to ten.* But we cannot dwell 
longer on his course in the Senate than to observe that he per- 
formed with unqualified applause the office of a leader in the re- 
publican party during a period of five years the most remarkable 
in our annals. As a state politician, he approved the abolition 
of primogeniture and entails, and the separation of the church 
from the state. He was a friend of religious freedom in its largest 
sense ; and when Priestley, flying from a persecution which had 
reduced his library to ashes, and which threatened his life, arrived 
in this country, he became his friend ; and a copy of his work on 
History, presented to him by the author, is still to be seen in the 

* Of the thirty members who voted on the question of ratifying Jay's treaty, 
all are dead. Col. Burr, who represented New York, was the last survivor. S. 
T. Mason was the colleague of Henry Tazewell, and both left sons who held 
seats in the Senate. It is a singular coincidence that Henry Tazewell in 1795 
succeeded John Taylor of Caroline in the Senate of the United States, and that 
his son Littleton thirty years afterwards succeeded the same individual. Taze- 
well's Resolutions may be seen in Senate Journal, June 24, 1795. 



JAMES MADISON. 83 

library of his son. On the subject of state taxation he was in ad- 
vance of his times ; and after the close of the war resisted the 
policy of the payment of taxes in kind as equally injurious to the 
interests of the planter and of the Commonwealth ; and, although 
that system was upheld by Henry, Pendleton, Cabell of Union 
Hill, and other prominent men, he finally succeeded with others in 
effecting a change. His career in the federal councils drew to a 
sudden close. He was taken ill from exposure on his journey to 
Philadelphia in which city Congress then held its sessions, and 
died in the winter of 1799 in the forty-eighth year of his age. 
There his remains repose near those of the eloquent Innis. Thus 
passed away one among the most distinguished of our early states- 
men, who from his youth, in the sunshine of peace and amid the 
storms of revolution, had devoted all his faculties to the service of 
his country ; and if the light of his glory in the long lapse of years 
has seemed to grow dim, it is a subject of gratulation that it has 
been lost, as his fondest wishes would have led him to lose it, in 
the blaze which the genius of his only son has kindled about his 
name. 

Widely different from the fate of Henry Tazewell was that of 
the small, delicate young man by his side, the last of the trium- 
virate, his associate and friend. They were indeed to act in uni- 
son with each other, and in the bonds of strictest friendship, for 
almost a quarter of a century yet to come ; but, when Tazewell de- 
parted, the fame of that young man had not reached its zenith. 
He was two years older than Tazewell, but not only survived him 
more than a third of a century, but saw, in the long lapse of sixty 
years, every member of the Convention, one by one, pass to the 
grave. His health had been impaired by the zeal with which he had 
pursued his studies at Princeton under the fostering care of Wither- 
spoon ; and, although he had taken his degree five years before 
and had spent the interval in the country, it had not recovered its 
original vigor. If he did not possess the personal accomplishments 
of Tazewell, his gallant bearing, and that intuitive tact with 
which he unconsciously won the regards of all with whom he 
associated, there was much about him that was engaging, and to a 
close observer prepossessing. In stature he was indeed one of the 
smallest of men ; but his modest deportment which almost ap- 
proached a sensitive reserve, his simple and pleasing address, and, 



84 JAMES MADISON. 

above all, his face on which even then might have been slightly 
traced those lines of benevolence and thought which, after an in- 
terval of eighty years, are freshly remembered by many persons 
now living, were soon observed, and, when once observed, made 
a decided impression in his favor. Even then, as in the admira- 
ble portrait of him by Catlin, taken five years before his death, 
might have been seen that peak of hair descending low in front and 
in its sudden retirement displaying a forehead which Lavater or 
Spurzheim would have reverently touched.* Added to the vari- 
ous qualifications of the scholar and statesman which, young as he 

* The following memorandum I received from Gov. Edward Coles, of Phila- 
delphia, who submitted it for the correction of Mr. Madison which it received : 
" The earliest account Mr. Madison had of the residence of his ancestors in 
Virginia was, that John Madison took out a patent in the year 1653 for land 
situated between " North and York rivers, " on the shores of the Chesapeake 
Bay. He was the father of John Madison, who was the father of Ambrose Madi- 
son who married Frances Taylor, August 30, 1700, lived at Montpelier in Orange 
county, and was the father of James Madison who married Eleanor Conway, 
who were the parents of James Madison, the fourth president of the United 
States, who was born at the house of his maternal grandmother at Port Conway 
near Port Royal on the Rappahannock river March 16, 1751. He was sent 
to school to Mr. Robertson, a Scotchman, in King and Queen county, by whom 
he was taught English, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, 8tc. He afterwards 
continued his studies at his father's house in Orange county under the tuition 
of Parson Martin, a Jerseyman and brother of Gov. Martin ot N. Carolina, until 
1769, when he went to Princeton College in New Jersey. There he graduated in 
1771, having studied the Junior and Senior classes in one year. He remained 
in bad health at Princeton until 1772, studying and availing himself of the Col- 
legiate library, and friendly advice of Dr. Witherspoon, the president of the 
College, who took a great liking to him. He remained in bad health for many 
years, having an affection of the breast and nerves; but for which circumstance 
he would have joined the army. In the spring of 1776 he was elected a mem- 
ber of the General Assembly of Virginia. He lost his re-election in 1777 in 
consequence of his refusing to treat and electioneer. He was elected by the 
General Assembly in the winter of 1777-8 a member of the Executive Coun- 
cil of Virginia, and remained a member of that Council until the winter 
of 1779-S0, when he was elected by the General Assembly a member of 
Congress, in which body he served until the fall of 1783. He was elected 
a member of the General Assembly of Virginia in the spring of 178-1 
and again in 1785. He was elected in 1786 a member of Congress by 
the General Assembly, and also to the Annapolis Convention; and in 1787 
he was elected to the Philadelphia Convention which made the Consti- 
tution of the U. S., and in 1788 to the Virginia Convention which ratified 
it on the part of that state. He remained in Congress from 1786 to March 
1797. He was elected a member of the General Assembly of Virginia in the 
spring of 1798 ; an elector of President and Vice President of the U. S. in 
1800 ; appointed by president Jefferson Secretary of State of the U. S. in 
1801 ; and elected President of the United States in 1808, and again in 1812." 
" To this should now be added, that he was elected in 1829 to the Convention 
which met at Richmond to amend the Virginia constitution. And it may be 
interesting further to add, that Zachary Taylor, who was elected president of the 
United States in 1848, was of the family of Frances Taylor who married Am- 
brose Madison as above stated, and in that way was a relation of Mr. Madison. 
In September 1794 Mr. Madison married Mrs. D. P. Todd, whose maiden 



JAMES MADISON. 85 

was, he possessed to an amazing extent, there was an exquisite 
sense of humor, an almost inseparable concomitant of high genius, 
which, it may be mentioned as a trait of character, though sensi- 
bly felt and admired in conversation, and which was to be detected 
in the demure caste of his flexile lips, was so effectually con- 
trolled as never to appear in any of the written compositions of a 
long life, nor in the spontaneous effusions of public discussion. 
Such was the wealth of his mind, that, as if he thought that in the 
discussion of public questions no other weapons were necessary 
than those with which truth and reason supplied him, he could 
hold in abeyance a faculty, which, of itself, built up one of the 
most brilliant reputations of the last half century, and which none 
could have wielded with more masterly skill than himself. Nor 
did his love of humor forsake him in his old age. During the last 
year of his life, when visited by two eminent men, his friends and 
neighbors, as he resumed his recumbent position on the couch from 
which he had risen to receive them, he apologised for so doing, 
observing with a smile: " I always talk more easily when I lie.* 
In the Convention now sitting he took his station, as it were at 
once, by the side of the first men of the body, and though a new 
member, and a most youthful one, undistinguished by descent or 
wealth, and though not present at its organization, he was placed 

name was Payne. The family was from Virginia, but had for several years 
resided in Philadelphia." 

"Mr. Madison died on the 28th of June, 1836, and was interred by the 
side of his father and mother in the family graveyard at his seat called Mont- 
pelier." 

" In his dress he was not at all eccentric, or given to dandyism ; but always 
appeared neat and genteel, and in the costume of a well-bred and tasty old 
school gentleman. I have heard in early life he sometimes wore light-colored 
clothes ; but from the time I first knew him, which was when he visited at 
my father's when I was a child, never knew him to wear any other color than 
black ; his coat being cut in what is termed dress-fashion ; his breeches short, 
with buckles at the knees, black silk stockings, and shoes with strings or long 
fair top boots when out in cold weather, or when he rode on horseback of which 
he was fond. His hat was of the shape and fashion usually worn by gentlemen 
of his age. He wore powder on his hair, which was dressed full over the ears, 
tied behind, and brought to a point above the forehead, to cover in some degree 
his baldness, as may be noticed in all the likenesses taken of him. This calls 
to mind your inquiry as to what likeness of him I consider the best. Stuart's 
has always been so considered, and I have, I presume, the best he ever took, 
as it is an original one taken for Mr. Madison in 1803 or '4. The likeness by 
Longacre, taken in 1833, is an excellent one of him at that time. The features 
and expression in his likeness, I think, are more accurate and faithful of him in 
the 83rd year of his age, than likenesses taken of him at an earlier period." 

* I have heard the Hon. W. C. Rives tell this incident with fine effect. 



86 JAMES MADISON. 

with his friends Tazewell and Randolph on the grand committee 
for drafting a declaration of rights and a plan of government. It 
was impossible to converse with him in the intervals of business, 
or at an evening party, without feeling that he deserved the com- 
pliment which the great critic of Greece paid, as a mark of im- 
mortality, to the Jewish law-giver, but which has since degene- 
rated into common-place, that he was no common man. The pre- 
cision and purity of his speech, his familiarity with topics beyond 
the reach not only of ordinary young men but of reputable states- 
men, the richness and beauty, and, especially, the appositeness and 
force of his illustrations drawn from ancient and modern history, 
excited the admiration of the social circle. For, as yet, he had 
not engaged in public debate; nor was it until he had served in 
the House of Delegates and in the Congress, that he participated 
in discussion ; but, when once he had essayed his strength, he 
never fell back, and thenceforth displayed talents for business and 
debate rarely surpassed. How it would have cheered the hearts 
and have given fresh animation to the purposes of that assem- 
bly, if, at that hour of trial and suspense, when a war with the 
most formidable nation of the world was actually raging round 
them, they could have read the future history of that young man ! 
■ — could they have known that he, young, delicate, unpretending 
as he was, the son of a plain Orange planter, was destined to live 
to see a constitution, to be made by their hands, flourish for more 
than half a century; that mainly through his efforts, a massive 
church-establishment, which for almost two centuries had been the 
minister of peace and holy jo} r to some of the greatest and purest 
men who had lived during that time, and of persecution, torture 
and death to others equally as good and equally as great, should 
topple to its downfall ; that he Avould become a member of the 
Congress of a Confederation, in the framing of which he was to 
render essential aid, yet to be formed, which would bear the coun- 
try triumphantly through the war ; that he would assist in the rati- 
fication of a treaty with Great Britain, which would acknowledge 
the independence of the States, and establish peace within their 
borders; that he would be appointed a member of a Convention 
which would form a federal constitution, and of a Convention, 
which, in the name and in behalf of Virginia, would ratify it, and 
that he would perform a distinguished part in both bodies; that 



JAMES MADISON. 87 

under that system his country was destined to become one of the 
most powerful nations of the globe ; that he should be chosen a 
member of the House of Representatives under the new system, 
and extend efficient aid in putting that system into operation ; that 
in the fullness of time he should become under that government 
the Secretary of State, and the President of the United States ; 
that he should declare the second war with Great Britain, and, 
when he had broken the spell of British invincibility on the sea, 
should ratify another treaty of peace with that haughty power ; 
that he should preside in his retirement from high office in a noble 
University called into existence by his native state ; that he should 
be summoned in extreme old age, his faculties yet unimpaired, af- 
ter the lapse of more than half a century, to revise the constitution 
which the Convention now sitting was about to form ; that sixty 
years from that time, and on the sixtieth anniversary of the day on 
which they were to adopt their constitution, he should descend to 
the grave ;* that a nation of fourteen millions of people, stretching 
from the Northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific, should testify their grief by the flowing of 
tears, by the tolling of bells, by the thunders of artillery, by the 
stately march of funereal processions such as in the Old World 
only commemorate the obsequies of kings, and by eulogies from 
the lips of their most eloquent men ; and that the settler in his 
cabin beyond the Mississippi and by the waters of the Oregon, 
the teacher in his school, the mechanic in his shop, the sailor on 
the deck, the professor from his chair, the priest at the altar, the 
statesman in the senate, and the grave historian with his awful 
style in his hand, should pronounce with one accord that the syno- 
nym of private and public virtue, of exalted statesmanship, and of 
true glory, was to be found — then and thenceforth — in the name 
of James Madison, t 

The points of connexion between Madison, Randolph, and Taze- 
well are more numerous and more conspicuous than are usually 

* The Convention practically adopted the constitution on the 28th of June, 
and appointed the next day for making the elections called for by the instrument; 
the last reading on the 29th being merely a matter of form. Mr. Madison died 
on the 28th of June, 1836. 

t Perhaps the highest compliment Mr. Madison ever received was that pro- 
nounced by his great antagonist in federal politics, John Marshall, that " he 
was the model of the American statesman." This is on the authority of C. J. 
Ingersoll. 



88 MADISON, RANDOLPH AND TAZEWELL. 

seen in the lives of eminent contemporaries. Randolph and Taze- 
well were residents of this city, were students of this institution, 
and were well known to each other. Madison had studied at 
Princeton, and was not generally known here until he appeared in 
the Convention. All three may be said to have begun their public 
life with the session of the Convention, though, strictly speaking, 
Tazewell had sat in the House of Burgesses at its last session. 
' From this date they engaged in the generous contest for reputation 
and for public honors, and gallantly did they put forth their fine 
qualities until near the close of the century, when Randolph with- 
drew altogether from public life, and when Tazewell, his arm never 
more vigorous, his spirit never more eager, clad in full panoply, and 
in the front of the fight, fell on a distant field. All three were im- 
mediately placed on the grand committee for drafting a declaration 
of rights and the constitution, — a signal honor for men so young. 
Randolph was elected by the body the first Attorney General of 
the new Commonwealth. Madison and Tazewell were returned to 
the first House of Delegates under the new Constitution, Randolph, 
who held his appointment as Attorney General, soon to become its 
Clerk. At the next session Madison was elected a member of the 
Council ; Tazewell kept his post in the House, and Randolph the 
Attorney Generalship. Randolph was the first of the triumvirate 
to go abroad, having been sent to Congress in 1779, whither he 
was followed the year after by Madison. In 1785 Tazewell, who 
had held his seat in the House of Delegates continuously near ten 
years, was elected a judge of the General Court, and under the ex- 
isting law became a judge of the Court of Appeals, Madison now re- 
turning to the House of Delegates, and Randolph soon after having 
been elected Governor. All of them approved a revision of the Ar- 
ticles of Confederation, Madison and Randolph having been deputed 
to the Convention at Annapolis, and to the General Convention in 
Philadelphia, and Tazewell, who, foreseeing the protracted sessions 
of the body, and unable to leave his seat on the bench for the third 
of a year without manifest injury to individuals and to the public, 
remaining at home.* In the discussion, of the General Convention 
both Madison and Randolph were conspicuous; Randolph, however, 

•Mr. Wythe tried the experiment of leaving; his court but was soon compelled 
to return. I have lately heard from Gov. Tazewell that Mr, Wythe returned 
in consequence of the death of his wife. 



MADISON, RANDOLPH AND TAZEWELL. 89 

bringing forth a scheme, which, it is believed, was concocted be- 
tween them, which prescribed a form of government self-acting and 
complete within itself, and which was in substance ultimately- 
adopted ; and though Randolph differed from Madison and voted 
against the adoption of the constitution in the Convention which 
framed it, while Madison strenuously upheld it, both sustained that 
instrument in the Virginia Convention which was summoned to 
pass upon it; Tazewell, though not a member of the latter body, 
being opposed to its ratification. The papers of Madison, published 
by Congress, attest the close and long-continued correspondence on 
political subjects that was carried on by Madison and Randolph, 
and reveal some traits of the times not to be seen elsewhere. On 
the adoption of the federal constitution, all three of these young 
men embraced the same rules for the adjustment and interpretation 
of its powers, Madison taking his seat in the first House of Repre- 
sentatives, and Randolph, who had recently retired from the office 
of Governor, his seat in the Cabinet of Washington as the first 
Attorney General ; Tazewell, who was shortly after called to the 
Court of Appeals under the recent law, not taking his seat in the 
Senate until the close of the first administration; all three, however, 
having coincided with each other from the beginning on the great 
questions of constitutional law and public policy to which the estab- 
lishment and the administration of the new government gave rise. 
Randolph, having succeeded Mr. Jefferson as Secretary of State, 
withdrew finally in 1795 from the federal arena, and devoted the 
remainder of his life to the practice of the law, Tazewell and Mad- 
ison, one in the Senate, the other in the House of Representatives, 
leading the van in the contests in which their party was engaged. 
In 1799 Tazewell was suddenly cut off, but not until he held a po- 
sition which placed him in advance of his friendly rivals and asso- 
ciates. To be chosen a member of the Senate of the United States 
is indeed a great honor, but to be elected by Senators to preside in 
the body is, perhaps, the highest individual honor within the 
scope of our government.* By the side of such a distinction, a 
mere executive appointment, however exalted, sinks in the com- 
parison. Thus was the field left to Madison, who, delicate as he 
was in youth and indeed throughout life, and averse from that 

• Judge Tazewell was twice elected president of the Senate. Thirty-seven 
years later his son was elected to the same office. 



90 ARCHIBALD CART. 

training which is believed to impart stability to health, survived 
Randolph near a quarter of a century, and Tazewell more than a 
third.* 

Yet, however brilliant were Madison and Randolph and Tazewell, 
and full of promise, they were in the midst of men, who had ruled 
the destinies of the colony before they were born, who were now 
in the full possession of their faculties, and who were for a long 
time to come yet to lead the deliberations of the house. There are 
two men, not far from each other you perceive, who began their 
career about the same time, who resided not far from each other on 
opposite banks of the James, who pursued their youthful studies 
within the walls of your institution, who in all the perplexing con- 
tests in the House of Burgesses previous to the Revolution stood 
side by side, who were to assist in the public councils either at 
home or abroad throughout the war, and who survived to behold 
the establishment of independence. Here, within this sanctuary, 
whose floor has often echoed their youthful tread, let their names 
be pronounced with gratitude and praise. I allude to Archibald 
Cary of Ampthill in the county of Chesterfield, and to Benjamin 
Harrison of Berkeley in the county of Charles City. One of them, 
you see, is much taller than the other. Harrison was six feet high, 
of large dimensions, and of a florid aspect ; while his compatriot 
Cary barely reached the middle stature, was compactly built, and 
was of such capacity of physical endurance as to have received 
partly on that account but mainly from his indomitable courage the 
soubriquet of "Old Iron."* The face of Cary in youth was re- 
markably handsome ; his features small and delicately chiselled ; 
his eye of that peculiar brightness which may yet be seen in all his 
race. His portrait, painted by the elder Peale, may be seen in the 

*It is curious to observe that neither Tazewell nor Randolph ever lost an 
election, while Madison was defeated in his election as a candidate lor the 
House of Delegates in 1777, as a candidate for the Senate of the first Congress, 
and as a candidate for the same office in 1795 when Tazewell was elected ; butin 
this last mentioned instance it is certain that his name was put forth rather in 
the spirit of opposition than with a view of securing his election, as the regular 
candidate of the party enjoyed from first to last its entire confidence. It may 
be mentioned that Tazewell was elected to the office of Recorder of the Borough 
of Norfolk which Sir John Randolph filled at the time of his death, and waa 
succeeded by Edmund Randolph. 

* It is probable that, as Col. Cary had an iron furnace and a manufacturing 
mill on the site of the old furnace on Falling Creek established by John Barkly, 
who was murdered there with all his men by the Indians on the 22nd of March, 
1G22, this circumstance might have suggested the name of Old Iron. His 
mills were burned by the British during Arnold's invasion. 



ARCHIBALD CARY. 91 

parlor of his grandson in the county of Cumberland.* In form and 
temperament, his grandson, the late Governor Thomas Mann Ran- 
dolph, is said to have borne a near resemblance to him. He had 
many of those qualities which were congenial to the tastes of the 
colonial aristocracy ; for his ancestors had not only emigrated as 
early as 1640 to the colony, but were unquestionably of noble ex- 
traction. His ancestor, Miles Cary, had sat in the House of Bur- 
gesses more than a century before the passage of the resolutions 
against the stamp act. He was a descendant of Henry Lord 
Hunsdon, and was himself at the time of his death the heir appa- 
rent of the barony .t He delighted in blooded horses and in im- 
proved breeds of stock which he imported with patriotic views, 
and was most systematic and successful as a planter. But it was 
not his physical prowess, his noble blood, or his agricultural skill, 
which gave him the decided preponderance which for five and 
twenty years he held in the councils of the colony and of the Com- 
monwealth. He entered the House of Burgesses at an early age, 
60on became intimately acquainted with its forms, and rose into the 
front rank of men who were ever the first of any assembly to which 
they belonged. In 1764 he had attained to such eminence, that he 
was appointed one of the committee of nine to which was assigned 
the duty of preparing memorials to the king, to the lords, and to the 
commons ; t and in 1765, for the reasons stated in the case of Pen- 
dleton and Bland, voted against the resolutions of Henry. In 1766 
it was on his motion that Peyton Randolph was elected speaker of 
the House of Burgesses as the successor of Col. Robinson, in oppo- 
sition to Col. Bland who was nominated and eloquently sustained 
by Richard Henry Lee. In 1770 he was a member of the mercan- 
tile association consisting of the members of the House of Burgesses 
and the leading merchants, which was organized to resist the 
stamp act by practical measures, and his name stands fifth on a list 
which records the patriotism of Washington, Pendleton, Wythe, 
Nicholas, Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Eyre, Barraud, Thomas New- 
ton, Anthony Walke, John Hutchings, Paul Carrington, Benjamin 
Harrison, and of other gallant spirits who were foremost in resisting 

*John Cary Page, Esq. 

fFor the family of Cary see Burke's Commoners, "Cary of Fullerton." 

JThe committee consisted of Peyton Randolph, R. H. Lee, Landon Carter, 
Wythe, Pendleton, B. Harrison. Gary, Fleming and R. Bland. 



92 ARCHIBALD CARY. 

the attacks upon the liberties of the colony. In 1773 he was one of 
the eleven who composed the celebrated Committee of Correspon- 
dence, and in August 1774 was a member of the first Convention 
of Virginia, which met in this city, and which appointed delegates 
to the Congress which assembled in Philadelphia the month fol- 
lowing, and was duly returned to the other Conventions which were 
held until the state government was established. In the Conven- 
tion of 1776 now sitting his position was one of the highest dis- 
tinction. As chairman of the house in Committee of the whole, he 
reported the resolution instructing the delegates in Congress to 
propose independence, and when the committee was appointed to 
prepare a declaration of rights and a plan of government, and which 
consisted of the ablest men in the body, he was placed at its head, 
and reported those measures to the house. It was from his lips that 
the words of the resolution of independence, of the declaration of 
rights, and of the first constitution of Virginia first fell upon the 
public ear. Rarely has it been the fortune of a statesman to connect 
himself so intimately in so brief a space with three such important 
measures in the history of a nation. On the organization of the 
state government he was returned to the Senate, and became the 
first speaker of that body, performing the duties of the office with 
a readiness which from his long and familiar acquaintance with the 
proceedings of public bodies seemed intuitive, and with a dignity 
and elegance which tradition has delighted to commemorate. It 
was while he was speaker of the Senate that a thrilling incident is 
said to have occurred, which, even if apochryphal, shows in a 
striking manner the estimation in which he was held by his contem- 
poraries. The scheme of a dictator, according to Girardin, was 
talked of in the Assembly, then sitting (1776) in this city; and i 
is alleged that the friends of the measure were in favor of Patrick 
Henry for the office. Bitterly opposed to such a scheme, and 
under the excitement of the moment, Col. Cary met Col. Syme, 
the half brother of Henry, in the lobby of the house, and accosted 
him: "Sir, I am told that your brother wishes to be dictator — Tell 
him from me, that the day of his appointment shall be the day of 
his death ; for he shall find my dagger in his heart before the sunset 
of that day." So far as the existence of such a project is concerned, 
it is proper to observe that the journals of the Senate and House of 
Delegates are wholly silent ; but they contain resolutions conferring 



ARCHIBALD CARY. 93 

large powers upon the Governor and Council, and instructing the 
delegates in Congress to propose to that body the propriety of in- 
vesting Gen. Washington with powers almost dictatorial, which the 
Congress at an earl}' day assented -to. We must be careful in 
forming our opinions upon such questions to place ourselves in 
the point of view occupied by the statesmen of that day ; to call to 
mind the crisis that was impending ; to remember that the House 
of Delegates, when its members had just escaped the sabres of 
Tarleton's cavalry, and when Col. Cary himself was speaker of the 
Senate, did pass a resolution authorising a number of the members 
less than a majority of the whole house to constitute a quorum, thus 
surrendering the powers of the house not to one dictator but to 
more than one; and that during almost the entire period of the 
Revolution, South Carolina, who had formed a plan of government 
before Virginia had adopted her constitution, invested her Execu- 
tive with the very powers which it is alleged some of our politicians 
were anxious to confer upon our own Executive.* 

This distinguished man remained in the senate as its presiding 
officer until 1786, when he died at Ampthill, where his ashes now 
repose. The career of Col. Cary was confined to Virginia, and 
though his reputation is almost unknown to the reader of general 
history, the various and responsible services which he rendered for 
a quarter of a century to his native state, his fervid patriotism, 
which impelled him onward when others shrunk back appalled, and 
his serene intrepidity, afford imperishable titles to the love and 
gratitude of coming generations.! 

*On this subject see Wirt's Henry 222 and 248; Girardin's continuation of 
Burk, written under the eye of Mr. Jefferson who endorses in his autobiograph- 
ical sketch (Memoirs vol. 1) so much of the work as treats of his own state- 
administration, page 189 ; and JeJferson's Notes Query XIII. Constitution. 
Those who may have had glimpses of the secret history of this epoch may well 
believe that some spicy discussions are yet to appear upon this subject. 

f The following extract from a letter in my possession will be read with 
some interest by the student of William and Mary as well as others : 

"Miles Cary, the son of John Cary of Bristol, England, came to Virginia 
in 1640, and settled in the county of Warwick, which in 1659 he represented 
in the House of Burgesses. In 1667 he died, leaving four sons. His second 
son, Henry, was appointed on the removal of the seat of government to Wil- 
liamsburg superintendant of the Capitol and other public buildings to be erect- 
ed there. His son Henry (the father of Archibald) was also appointed in due 
time to superintend the rebuilding of the College of William and Mary, where 
on the 31st of July 1732 the first five bricks of the President's house were laid 
by James Blair, the President, Bartholomew Yates, William Dawson, William 
Stith, (the historian,) and John Fox professors, at the instance of Mr. Cary. 
Mr. C. married Mary a daughter of Richard Randolph of Curls, county of Hen- 



94 BENJAMIN HARRISON. 

With Archibald Cary was intimately associated in the councils 
of the Colony and of the Commonwealth Benjamin Harrison of 
Berkeley, his neighbor and his friend. He, too, was a member of 
the House of Burgesses at an early period, was a member of the 
committee of 1764 which prepared the memorials to the king, to 
the lords, and to the commons of England, a member of the House 
in 1765, and, like Cary, and on the same grounds, opposed the 
resolutions of Henry; a member of the Mercantile Association of 
1770; a member of the Committee of Correspondence; and a mem- 
ber of all the Conventions held until the government under the 
Constitution was established. In the Convention of March 1775, 
from the considerations which swayed Nicholas, Bland, Pendleton, 
and others, he joined with Cary in opposing the resolutions of Henry 
for putting the colony into a " posture of defence," but was ap- 
pointed one of the committee of twelve to carry those resolutions 
into effect. In 1774 Harrison was appointed one of the seven 
delegates to the first Congress, and was elected four times to a 
seat in that body. If Archibald Cary reported to the Virginia Con- 
vention the resolution instructing the delegates in Congress to 
propose independence, Harrison, as chairman of the Committee of 
the Whole in Congress, reported to that body the resolution that 
declared the colonies free and independent, and subsequently in the 
same capacity the great Declaration itself, which in due time he 
signed, thus recording his name on a charter compared with which 
the roll of Battle Abbey is but the plaything of pride and folly. 
If Cary - was chosen to preside in the Senate of Virginia, Harrison 
was called to the chair of the House of Delegates, and would have 
been elected to the chair of Congress as the successor of his 
brother-in-law Peyton Randolph, but that from motives of the 
nicest delicacy and of the loftiest patriotism he insisted that his 
name should be withdrawn in favor of John Hancock, who was 
accordingly elected.* It was on his return from Congress that he 

rico, and left five daughters, married to Thomas Mann Randolph of Tnckahoe, 
Thomas Isham Randolph of Dungeness, Archibald Boiling, Carter Page, and 
Joseph Kincade. Col. A. Cary died at Ampthill in September 1786." 

* It is reported, too broadly perhaps, that when Hancock, who had but re- 
cently taken his seat in Congress, was reluctant to accept the chair, Harrison, 
who was remarkably athletic, took him up in his arms, and placed him in it, 
declaring at the same time : " We will show mother Britain how little we care 
for her by making a Massachusetts man our president, whom she has excluded 
from pardon by a public proclamation." 

Our limits prevent a full enumeration of the important posts held by Col. 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 95 

entered the House of Delegates, of which he was chosen Speaker 
— an office which he filled until 1781, when he was elected Go- 
vernor of the Commonwealth. He was also a member of the first 
Council of State, and was a member of the Convention which 
ratified the federal constitution, casting his vote against it. He 
died in April 1791 at his residence in Charles City. 

Of all the ancient families in the Colony, that of Harrison, if 
not the oldest, is one of the oldest. The original ancestor some- 
time before the year 1645 had come over to the colony ; but, as 
his name does not appear in the list of the early patentees re- 
corded by Burk, it is probable that he bought land already pa- 
tented, or may have engaged in mercantile pursuits. The first 
born of the name in the colony of whom we have a distinct record, 
was Benjamin Harrison who became a member of the Council, and 
was Speaker of the House of Burgesses, and died in Southwark 
Parish in the county of Surry in 1712, in his sixty second year.* 
And from 1645 to this date, a period of more than two centuries, the 
name has been distinguished for the patriotism, the intelligence, 
and the moral worth of those who have borne it. Berkeley, or, as 
our ancestors spelt and spoke the word, " Barkley," and Brandon 
were almost as familiar names two centuries ago as they are 
now, and as Rufford and Stowe were to the colonists in the 
time of Charles the second. If Cary could trace his lineage to 
the British nobility, Harrison could boast of a relationship which 
at a later day eclipsed that of his friend and compeer ; for, though 
not lineally descended from Col. Harrison who sat in the council 

Harrison in Congress. He was throughout his long term of service almost in- 
variably chairman of the Committee of the Whole, and especially while the 
articles of Confederation were under discussion. He was one of a committee 
of three sent to Washington at Cambridge to concert plans for the supply of 
his army. He was chairman of the Board of War, and of the Committee of 
Foreign Affairs until a bureau was formed with a secretary at its head. He 
was sent by Congress on a mission to Maryland to concert with the Executive 
of that Colony a scheme for the defense of the Cheseapeake. He was sent 
to New York to arrange with Gen. Lee a plan of defense for that city and for 
the selection of sites for forts on the East and North rivers. He was al-o 
chairman oi the committee on Marine Affairs, which included the regulation 
of the Navy. He was the chairman of the Canada expedition committee. In- 
deed the numerous and important trusts committed to him during his prolonged 
term show the unlimited confidence placed in his military skill, practical sense, 
and unflinching patriotism. 

* The probability is that B. Harrison, the eldest, was a son of Hermon Har- 
rison, who came over in what was called the " Second Supply" to Virginia, 
(see Smith's Hist, of Va. Rice's edition Vol. I. 203,) or of Master John Harri- 
son who was Governor in 1623, Smith's History Vol. II. 165. 



96 BENJAMIN IURMSON. 

which condemned Charles the first to the block, was connected 
collaterally with him ; and, if he was not to tread in his footsteps 
in consigning a king to the scaffold, he was destined to act a promi- 
nent part in sundering the dominions of one of his successors on the 
throne of Britain. The distinctive merits of Harrison, though he 
both wrote and spoke readily and ably, lay not so much in his strict- 
ly intellectual qualities, as in the force of his character, his practical 
sense, his fearlessness, and his love of country. Great presence 
of mind, a temper whose cheerfulness the innumerable vexations 
of a civil war could not cloud, and his downright candor which 
knew no compromise, and which led him to say plain things in 
plain words, were also among his leading characteristics. Hence 
the positions which he held in Congress ; in military affairs, the dif- 
ficult and delicate missions on which he was despatched to Cam- 
bridge, to Maryland, and to New York, the duties of which he 
discharged with the unanimous approval of Congress, and of the 
General Assembly of his native state, which more than once ac- 
knowledged their warm sense of the value of his public services.* 
I have alluded to his cheerfulness in times of trial. Even on the 
gravest occasions his humor sometimes moved the mirth of his 
associates. He was a very large man, and by the side of Elbridge 
Gerry, who was very spare, he Avas almost a giant ; and overlook- 
ing Gerry as he affixed his name to the declaration of independence 
which he had previously signed, observed to him : " Gerry, when 
the time of hanging comes, I shall have the advantage of you ; it 
will be over with me in a minute, but you will be kicking in the 
air half an hour after I am gone."t The readiest and most suc- 
cessful impromptu ever uttered on the floor of Congress is recorded 
of him by Mr. Jefferson. When in June 1775 John Dickinson 
had succeeded in procuring the adoption by Congress of a declara- 
tion of the causes for taking up arms, written by him in a temper 
almost revolting to the body which had sanctioned it wholly from 
regard to him, and in strong contrast with the manly one written 

* Journal House of Delegates 1776 page 6. 

f Cheerfulness in contemplation of the gallows would seem to be an heredi- 
tary trait of the Harrisons. Pepys in his Diary under the date of October 13, 
1660 (Vol. I. 146, London edition of 1828) has the following reference to Col. 
Harrison the regicide on the morning of his execution : " I went out to Char- 
ing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered ; which 
was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition." 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 97 

by Mr. Jefferson which it supplanted, he could not restrain his joy, 
and rose out of order to say to the house that there was but one. 
word in that paper which he disapproved and that was the word 
Congress. Harrison instantly rose and said : " Mr. President, 
there is but one word in that paper which I approve, and that is 
the word Congress.* Harrison out-lived Cary five years, and like 
him, may be said to have died in the public service ; for, though 
far advanced in life, he was a member elect of the House of Dele- 
gates, and was regarded as the person most likely to be chosen 
Governor at the approaching session of the Assembly ; — thus 
equipped to the last in the full harness which he put on in his 
early youth, and which, for the third of a century, in war and in 
peace, he had worn with honor to himself and with benefit to his 
country.! We would fain indulge the wish that it had been vouch- 
safed to this aged patriot to know that in the fullness of time, when 
his country had doubled its territory, and increased more than four- 
fold its population, his son William Henry should receive the high- 
est honor within the gift of a free people. 

And, now, Mr. President, if you look over the House, you will 
perceive that the tide of emigration, which has since flowed so 
steadily from East to West, and which will continue to flow for 
generations and for ages to come, had already begun its cours^ and 
you will recognize men who were born in the East, but nurtured in 
the West as the West then was, as the representatives of their 
adopted homes on the floor. About the year 1748 or 1750 a tall 
slim youth in the sixteenth or seventeenth year of his age, over six 
feet in height, with prominent features, bright blue eyes, and sandy 
hair, might have been seen passing on horseback by Roanoke Bridge 
in the county of Charlotte then a part of Lunenburg, on his way from 
Cumberland through the present estates of Edgehill and Greenfield, 
now owned by his descendants in the second and third degree, to 
Bushy Forest, the seat of Col. Clement Read, the clerk of the county 
of Lunenburg, who then held his office, as was almost invariably 
the case with clerks before the Revolution and for many years sub- 
sequently, at his private residence. The youth was of English de- 

* Jefferson's Memoirs Vol. I. 9. 

t It may be proper to say that Harrison did not leave his seat in Congress 
to attend the present Convention ; though R. H. Lee, and Wythe, and Nelson, 
who were also in Congress, appeared in the body before its adjournment. 

7 



98 PAUL CARRINGTOflT. 

scent. His maternal grandfather and his father had emigrated to 
this country by the way of Barbadoes in the early part of the cen- 
tury, and both had been engaged in the expedition of Col. Byrd, 
undertaken in 1736, for the ascertainment of the boundary line be- 
tween Virginia and North Carolina. That youth was Paul Car- 
rington. He had probably learned the rudiments of Latin, and 
had acquired mathematics enough, if not to calculate an eclipse, to 
perform with the exactest skill the ordinary computations in the 
business of life. He wrote a hand neat and small, which retained 
for near seventy years after undiminished its steadiness and its 
beauty. He was about to engage in the study of the law through 
the slow process of an apprenticeship in a clerk's office, and, 
like Pendleton, was to pass years of toil at the desk before his pro- 
bation was to close. Like Pendleton, he gained the confidence of 
his master ; and, unlike him, did not place it in jeopardy by a 
hasty marriage, but sought the hand of his master's daughter? 
which in due time he won. At one and twenty he began the 
practice of the law, and set about his business in such earnest that 
he soon rose into eminence, and up to the time of the Revolution, 
usually obtained more fees at a single court than are now received 
at all the courts of the counties into which the then shires have 
been since divided. The fees of that day were indeed small, but 
were carefully recorded by Carrington in books neatly ruled and 
neatly written, which after the lapse of more than a century are 
yet extant to attest his mode of business and the vast extent of his 
practice.* In 1765, when the county of Charlotte was set apart 
from Lunenburg, he was returned to the House of Burgesses. 
"When he took his seat, the session was advanced, but he was pre- 
sent when the resolutions of Henry against the Stamp Act were 
proposed, and voted against them.t He was successively returned 

* These fee books? are now in my possession by the kindness of Henry 
Carriiigton, esq., of Charlotte, the only surviving son of Paul Carrington the 
elder. I am also indebted to Mr. Carrington for the loan of his father's copies 
of some of the original journals of the House of Burgesses, including the ses- 
sion of 1765. 

t Since the delivery of this discourse, I have conversed with Henry Carring- 
rington, esq., of Charlotte, the only surviving son of Judge Paul Carrington, 
and leaifi from him that it is his confident belief that his father voted in favor 
of Henry's resolutions against the Stamp Act. Mr. Carrington justly states 
that his father was most prominent in opposing all the measures of the British 
ministry, and was the representative of the opposition in that whole region 
of country. But such was the case with Wythe, Pendleton, Peyton Randolph, 
Robert Carter Nicholas and other leading patriots, who nevertheless, on grounds 



PAUL CARRINGTON. 99 

a member of the House until 1775, when it was superseded by 
the Conventions of the people. In 1770 he was a member of the 
Mercantile Association heretofore alluded to, and in 1774 was a 
member of the first Convention, which chose the delegates to the 
Congress which met in Philadelphia in September of that year. 
He was a member of the Conventions of March, July and Decem- 
ber 1775, and that of May 1776 of which we are now speaking. 
In 1775 he was appointed a member of the Committee of Safety, 
and performed the duties of that office from the organization of 
the Committee till the new constitution came into effect the follow- 
ing year. To the discharge of the duties of a member of that 
Committee he brought precisely those qualifications which the po- 
sition demanded. His intimate acquaintance with the manners and 
customs of the people, and even with their prejudices, his thorough 
habits of business, his knowledge of the resources of the colony 
with which a term of ten years' service in the House of Burgesses 
had made him familiar, and his skill in finance, were the qualities 
which the emergency required, and which he possessed in an emi- 
nent degree. He also possessed that firmness of purpose, that 
stern 'personal courage, which sustained him in advising and in 
executing measures, which, though at the moment they appeared 
harsh and even perilous, were deemed necessary to the success of 
the public cause, and which, inherited by three gallant sons, led 
them, ere yet their youthful shoulders could well bear the weight 
of a musket, through some of the bloodiest fields of the war in the 
South. In the Convention of 1776 he voted for the resolution in- 
structing the delegates in Congress to propose independence, and 
was a member of the committee which reported the Declaration 

frequently stated in this discourse, opposed the resolutions of Henry. On the 
other hand, it was the impression of Col. Clement Carrington, an elder son of 
Paul, who was himself an actor in the Revolution, and who knew Henry, Ma- 
son, and all the great actors of the day, that his father voted against the reso- 
lutions. He stated to me that his father before the Revolution and afterwards 
rarely differed with Col. Pendleton. But as the session of 1765 was the first 
session of the House of Burgesses attended by Paul Carrington, it is not proba- 
ble that his intimacy with Pendleton began so early ; and he may have voted 
with the majority of the western men of that day by whose votes the resolu- 
tions were carried. As corroborative of this view, Mr. Henry Carrington, 
who remembers the free and frequent conversations of his father who was 
consulted by Mr. Wirt while he was writing the Memoirs of Henry, declares 
that from all that he heard, he had no doubt of his father's vote in favor of the 
resolutions. It should seem that neither of the sons could recall any distinct 
affirmation of their father on the subject. The journal, as before stated, con- 
tains no vote by Ayes and Noes. 



100 PAUL CARRINGTON. 

of Rights and the Constitution ; and. though then in his fortv-fourth 
year, he survived with one exception every member who composed 
it. On the organization of the new government he took his seat 
in the House of Delegates, from which he passed to the bench of 
the General Court, and to the Court of Appeals, in which last he 
remained until 1811, when, having attained his seventy-eighth year, 
and having outlived his judicial associates of the era of the Revo- 
lution, he resigned his appointment. 

It is remarkable that from his entrance into the House of Bur- 
gesses in 1765 until the death of Pendleton in 1803, a space of 
near forty years, he was always closely connected with that emi- 
nent man, between whom and himself there existed the warm- 
est personal friendship. Pendleton was twelve years older than 
Carrington, and had served thirteen years in the House of Bur- 
gesses when Carrington took his seat in the body. There were 
some traits of resemblance in their persons, in their early his- 
tory, and in their characters. Both were men of lofty stature, 
and of an imposing address ; and with a defective education had 
passed through the clerk's office to the bar. Both were members 
of the House of Burgesses from 1765 until the Conventions began 
to assemble. Both were members of all the Conventions, and of 
the Committee of Safety during the whole period of its existence. 
Both were members of the first House of Delegates under the con- 
stitution, and were called at the same time to the bench of the 
new judiciary, Carrington first to the General Court and after- 
wards to the second Court of Appeals. Both were members of 
the Virginia Federal Convention, and voted for the adoption of the 
constitution. In the body last named Pendleton was nominated 
to the office of President by Carrington, while Carrington was 
placed by Pendleton on the celebrated committee of twenty to 
which was assigned the office of reporting such amendments to 
the constitution "as shall by them be deemed necessary to be 
recommended to the consideration of Congress." 

In middle life, and until the war of the Revolution was 
past, Paul Carrington was of a grave turn. Before the troubles 
began, he had lost the bride of his youth. During the war, and 
when the Southern states were almost re-conquered colonies of 
Britain, he was never seen to smile. Day succeeded day in his 
domestic life, and not only no smile was seen to play upon his face, 



PAUL CARMNGTON. 101 

but hardly a word fell from his lips. He was almost overwhelmed 
with the calamities which assailed his country. At this moment of 
prosperity and peace, when our country has taken her station by 
the side of the most powerful nations, and when her flag is honored 
and feared even in the distant isles of the Indian Archipelago, we may 
well afford to dwell for a moment on the difficulties and dangers 
which beset the path of our fathers. In Virginia there was neither 
public nor private credit. The issues of the State were almost 
worthless. A thousand dollars of currency would hardly suffice to 
buy a waistcoat or a pair of boots. And, as all the debts of indi- 
viduals were payable at par in such a currency, the result was, that 
all whose wealth consisted in securities of any kind were reduced 
to utter poverty. At no time within the past ten years had gold 
or silver been much seen in the colony, but now both had entirely 
disappeared. Children, ten years old, had never seen a silver six- 
pence. Boys, who were old enough to play the scout, or shoulder 
a musket, had never seen a guinea.* At the breaking out of the 
war the debt due British merchants was estimated at ten millions of 
dollars, which, when the relative value of money is considered, was 
nearly equal to the present public debt of the state. Not only had 
the war put an end to the general cultivation of our great staple, 
which was lawful currency, but a number of slaves between thirty 
and forty thousand, one-fifth of the entire black population, had 
either gone over to the British or had been stolen by them. The 
young men and the middle-aged had either fallen in battle, or were 
absent with the army in the North or the South. Those of ad- 
vanced life, who remained at home, were in perpetual dread of the 
enemy who was ready to strike at every vulnerable point. Norfolk 
was in ashes, but Portsmouth was equally as accessible by a hostile 
squadron, and was repeatedly the headquarters of the foe. Rich- 
mond and Petersburg had been in his possession, and were always 
within his reach. The dashing corps of Tarleton were within an 
ace of seizing the General Assembly in full session in Charlottes- 
ville, a town in the interior, distant eighty miles from Richmond. 
Nor were these the only obstacles to the pursuits of ordinary life. 
Our own commissaries were abroad to seek horses and provisions for 

*I have been told by an actor in those times that the first specie that made 
its appearance in circulation was that procured by the sale of provisions to the 
French troops. When a farmer got a French gold or silver coin into his pos- 
session, he held it as fast and as long as he was able. 



102 PAUL CARRINGTON. 

the army in the field, and a fine horse or a fat ox or cow was deemed 
lawful prize. These domiciliary visits, however necessary and 
justifiable, were not only annoying and ruinous to individuals, but 
they might also be dangerous. Pictures of the king and queen, 
likenesses of the members of the house of Hanover, in whose honor 
our fathers delighted, but a short time before, to name their coun- 
ties, might involve a serious risk, and were hid in garrets and out- 
houses, or were destroyed.* The common necessaries of life could 
not be obtained even by the rich, if rich they could be called, who, 
if their negroes were not taken, or their horses impressed in the 
plough, could not secure from depredation the crops which they had 
planted, nor purchase with money, if money they had, a change of 
clothing or a pound of sugar. t Salt there was none in the country. 
Meat was cured with the earth dug out of old smoke-houses and 
old tobacco barns. If the soldiers were successful in obtaining a 
stray bushel of salt, it was instantly mixed with hickory ashes to 
make it go farther. When a soldier from Prince Edward on his 
return from the South was asked whether he had not killed a 
British officer whom he might have taken prisoner, he admitted he 
had, "but hoped the Lord would pardon him, as he hadn't tasted salt 
for a year." Lee's Legion was the favorite corps of the South, and 
was better provided for than any other ; yet few of the soldiers of 
the Legion had a change of apparel ; and when a well-clad tory was 
taken, their first act was to exchange garments with the prisoner. 
These circumstances were depressing enough. But there were 
reflections of a peculiar kind which occasionally flashed across the 
minds of the leading men of the day. Should the colonies be re- 
conquered, on their heads would fall the full weight of British ven- 
geance. A bill of attainder was on the table of the House of 
Commons, ready to be called up at a moment's warning, and it was 
known to contain the names of several of the prominent men of 
Virginia, and might easily be amended to contain yet more. There 
was also a conviction that, while some of the leaders would be par- 

*I have seen several paintings that were injured in the manner described, and 
possess likenesses of George the Third and his queen Charlotte, which ran the 
gauntlet of the outhouses during the Revolution, and which are seriously de- 
faced. 

|If the planters succeeded in getting their tobacco to market, it might be 
taken by the British. Campbell, in his introduction to the History of the Col- 
ony of Virginia, computes the loss sustained by invasion in six months at eleveD 
millions of dollars. Campbell, page 175. 



PAUL CARRINGTON. 103 

doned by the influence of friends, the fate of the remainder would 
be the more certain and the more severe. In Virginia and in 
North and South Carolina members of leading families had adhered 
to the royal cause, and had either taken up arms in its support or 
had withdrawn to England; and when the day of royal triumph 
should come round, they might interpose to save the lives and for- 
tunes of their friends; but who would stand up for Patrick Henry, 
George Mason, Pendleton, Paul Carrington, and others whose 
voices were heard in every council, and whose names were at the 
head of every committee of resistance to the royal authority, when 
the red cross of St. George should again flame above the palace and 
the capitol ? The remorseless murders perpetrated by a royal 
governor a century before at the close of Bacon's rebellion were 
freshly remembered ; and it was known by our fathers, as hap- 
pening in their own time, that the house of Hanover in [the Scotch 
rebellion had not leaned to the side of mercy. Such thoughts 
forced themselves upon the fiercest opponents of Great Britain. 
Of all the men of the Revolution Patrick Henry had displayed the 
greatest spirit. He had been the first to defy the power of the Brit- 
ish crown on the floor of the House of Burgesses, had headed the 
people in their efforts to recover the gunpowder purloined by Dun- 
more, and had been appointed commander of all the forces in the 
colony ; yet, so deeply impressed was he with the peril of the 
period, that, when Greene had reached Halifax old Court-house 
in his retreat before Cornwallis, and when Cornwallis himself was 
on the banks of the Dan waiting a fall of water, instead of harangu- 
ing the people of Henry, where he then was, and of marching with 
the levy of his county en masse to harrass the foe, fearing lest he 
might be captured by the scouting parties of the enemy, he hast- 
ened from the scene of war to Hanover. An honorable death in 
a fair field he did not dread, but he dreaded an ignominous death 
on the scaffold or from a tree. The intercepted letter of Corn- 
wallis to Nisbett Balfour, dictated on the spur of a momentary 
triumph, proves incontestably that the success of the British would 
have been written in the blood of the purest and greatest men of 
whom our country could boast. 

From the embarrassments of the period which we have described, 
and especially from the depreciated currency, few men suffered 
more severely than Paul Carrington. A large portion of his wealth 



104 PAUL CARRINGTON. 

was in the bonds of debtors, which became dross in his hands. 
As a legislator, he had sanctioned the issues of paper money as the 
only means of conducting the war, and, as a judge, he was bound 
to execute the laws. But in the midst of these trials he displayed 
the intrepidity of the patriot and the honesty of the man. While 
men of wealth went abroad to avoid meeting a debtor ; and, when 
a debtor called to pay for a fine estate in worthless rags, were not 
at home ; or, if at home, could not put their fingers on the bond of 
the debtor, who was requested to call again ;* there was no shuf- 
fling in the conduct of Carrington. On one occasion a wealthy 
Scotchman, who owed him a large sum of money, called upon him 
with a huge bundle of paper money in his hands. " Colonel," 
said the Scotchman, " / don't call this trash money — do you call it 
money V " Yes," answered Carrington, " it is the only money of 
my poor country in this severe hour of her sufferings." " Then," 
said the Scotchman, " here is the exact amount of my debt, prin- 
cipal and interest; give me my bond." And he gave him his bond. 
Another instance of a generous nature displayed the character of 
the man. His father died intestate before the passage of the act 
abolishing primogeniture, and being the oldest son, he became 
sole heir of the estate. At a time when nine-tenths of the titles 
of land were devised in a similar manner, public sentiment would 
have sustained him in exacting his legal claim ; but he scorned to 
deprive his brothers and sisters of their equal share of the wealth 
of a common parent, and apportioned the inheritance among them. 
Nor were his own services all that he gave to his country. His 
individual career was confined to the House of Burgesses, to the 
Conventions, to the Committee of Safety, to the House of Dele- 
gates, and to the judiciary; but he contributed three sons to the 
army : George, who was the first lieutenant of Armstrong's troop, 
and whose gallantry at Quinby Bridge is commemorated by Gen. 
Lee in his memoirs of the war in the South ; Paul, who was at the 
battle of Guilford, and Clement, who was in that desperate charge 
of the Maryland and Virginia lines on the bloody field of Eutaw, 
and was severely wounded by a musket ball fired at point blank 
distance from the house in which a datachment of the flying enemy 
had sought a shelter. 

* In due time provision was made by law to prevent all such evasions on the 
part of creditors. 



THOMAS READ. 105 

But, if the middle-life of Paul Carrington was engrossed with 
the cares and sufferings of his country, his latter years were 
cheered by her prosperity and glory. He became pleasant and 
cheerful as he grew old, and frequently indulged in a strain of hu- 
mor as peculiar as it was irresistible. He enjoyed good health, 
always retained the erect carriage of early manhood, and within 
a year of his death rode regularly to court, a distance of fifteen 
miles, on horseback. And on the twenty-first of June 1818, after 
a short illness of a disease which is as fatal to the young as 
the old, fifteen years after the death of Pendleton, in the eighty- 
sixth year of his age, he died at Mulberry Hill, his seat on the 
banks of the Staunton. 

The colleague of Carrington from the county of Charlotte, 
though his name has almost faded from the memory of the present 
generation, was equally distinguished by the fervor of his patriot- 
ism, by the strictest integrity, and by the highest sense of personal 
honor. They were nearly of the same age, were brothers-in-law, 
had been together in the same clerk's office, were, on all great 
occasions, colleagues in the public councils, and were personal 
friends, there were some strong points of resemblance in their 
characters. Both wrote excellent hands, were thoroughly skilled 
in finance, and carried such system into their private affairs that 
either could have turned at a moment's notice to a paper half a 
century old. Thomas Read, who inherited the papers of his 
father, the old clerk of Lunenburg, could have gone back nearly 
a century. Read, though not a lawyer by profession, was well 
versed in the law, and in his various legal controversies with some 
of the most eminent members of the bar was usually successful. 
Both, rather by the process of small profits and strict economy 
than by sudden speculation, accumulated large estates. Both, 
though courteous and affable, and noted for the disinterested and 
valuable services rendered indiscriminately to all who needed them, 
were slow in forming friendships ; but, when their friendships were 
formed, they were indissoluble. The friendship which Carrington 
cherished for Pendleton, and which Read cherished for Madison, 
no difficulty, no disaster, no evil tongue, could sunder or impair. 
Both were men of pure lives, and of honesty that became prover- 
bial ; and were for nearly two generations the confidential advisers 
of the people who knew that neither interest nor passion could 



106 THOMAS READ. 

sway their opinions. Bat, great as was the influence of Carrington 
in the county of Charlotte, that of Read, from his peculiar man- 
ners, from his long and unintermitted acquaintance with the peo- 
ple as clerk of the county for almost half a century, and from the 
caste of his political sentiments, was greater still. Hence in all 
the elections held for the state Conventions, the only bodies which, 
as clerk of a Court, he could attend, Read was returned the senior 
member of the Charlotte delegation. He was the son of Col. 
Clement Read,* who was clerk of the county of Lunenburg from 
1744 to 1765, when Charlotte was formed, who was one of the 
most efficient public men of his time as his letters still extant show, 
who was a member of the House of Burgesses, and whose remains 
now rest with those of numerous descendants in the burial ground 
of Bushy Forest. The success of Thomas Read, however, de- 
pended on his personal qualities. Like most of the active colo- 
nists who acquired large estates, he began life as a surveyor, an ap- 
pointment of some note in early times, and never granted until the 
candidate had passed a strict examination at the seat of govern- 
ment by a board organized for the purpose. He studied at William 
and Mary, and became deputy clerk of Charlotte in 1765, when, as 
before observed, it was set apart from Lunenburg, and in 1770 be- 
came principal, holding the office until his death in 1817, with 
the approbation of all.t His father was from a county bounded 

* The ancestor of Clement Read probably came over soon after the Restora- 
tion. Col. Thomas Read was one of Cromwell's Colonels, and was in command 
of a regiment when Monk addressed to the colonels of his army the celebrated 
letter of the 21st of February 1659, on taking the direction of civil aif'airs out 
of the hands of the parliament. Among the colonels of the army were Thomas 
Johnson, William Eyre, Banister, Nicholas and other common Virginia names. 
The probability is that, as the armistice was most shamefully broken on the 
restoration of Charles, some of these men or members of their families soon af- 
ter emigrated to the Colony. See Baker's Chronicle, edition 1665, page 686 
and 689. Among the knights of the Bath at the Coronation of Charles may be 
seen the names of Wise, Wray, Nicholas, and other old names of the Colony, 
(Ibid 736.) As they were protestants, if not tinged with puritanism, it is not 
unlikely that their sons came over to get rid of the religious tyranny of James. 
The name of Wise appears as early as 1682 as the standard bearer in the famous 
foray against sweet-scented tobacco. It has been well observed by Mr. Minor 
that the history of that foray is not well understood. 

* On the creation of a new county during the colonial regime a clerk was 
appointed from the secretary's office in Williamsburg, who at once removed 
to the new county to assist in its organization, or farmed the office to a deputy, 
or sold it for ready money. Read purchased the clerkship from his principal, 
who never resided in Charlotte, in 1770. In those days clerkships were fre- 
quently in the market, and were readily bought as a provision for a son, the 
court rarely refusing to confirm the title of the purchaser by a formal election 
to the office. The mode of original appointment continued down to the 



THOMAS READ. 107 

by the James, but Read himself was born in Lunenburg. Paul 
Carrington came directly from the James ; a distinction apparently 
of little note, but which may be plainly traced throughout the po- 
litical career of both. Carrington sided with the party of which 
Bland and Nicholas were the heads ; Read with that of which 
Henry and Jefferson were the heads. Carrington opposed the 
resolutious of 1765 against the Stamp Act ; Read would have sus- 
tained them. Carrington, in the March Convention of 1775, 
voted against the resolutions of Henry for embodying the militia ; 
Read would have voted for their adoption. Carrington, at a later 
day, in the Convention of 1788, voted in favor of ratifying the 
federal constitution ; Read, who was his colleague, opposed its 
ratification. Carrington sustained the administrations of Washing- 
ton and Adams ; Read, following the lead of Jefferson and Madi- 
son, opposed some of the leading measures of both administrations. 
Carrington opposed the administration of Jefferson ; Read sus- 
tained it with all his zeal. It was not until the administration of 
Madison that these worthy patriots united in a common cause. 

During the Revolution Read was the county lieutenant of Char- 
lotte, and not only marched on one occasion to Petersburg himself, 
but by his efficient aid in supplying the quotas of that county in 
men and means to the state and continental lines, rendered inval- 
uable service to his country. The requisitions addressed to him 
by Gov. Henry and Gov. Jefferson, endorsed and annotated by his 
own hand, are still extant to attest his zeal in the public cause. 
No county in the state surpassed his own in the relative numbers 
contributed to the army of the Revolution. It was his own brother, 
Isaac Read of Greenfield, who in the command of the fourth 
Virginia Regiment fell a martyr to disease in the city of Phila- 
delphia, where his ashes now repose.* It was Col. William Mor- 

Revolution, when the magistrates appointed whom they pleased to the office. 
The writers in the secretary's otfice complained bitterly of this innovation in 
their petitions to the General Assembly, and sought a remuneration for their 
past labors and blasted hopes. See the Journal of the House of Delegates of 
1776. 

* Isaac Read of Greenfield, as true a patriot as appeared in the Revolution, 
deserves a passing notice. He was for many years a member of the House of 
Burgesses, especially in 1769 when that body was dissolved by Lord Rotetourt, 
and when the members adjourned to the Raleigh to form an association against 
the act of parliament imposing duties on teas, &.c. To this instrument the 
name of Isaac Read is attached, as well as to the Mercantile Association formed 
by the members and leading merchants the following year. Read continued a 
member of the House of Burgesses until it was superseded by the Conventions. 



108 THOMAS LEWIS. 

ton of Charlotte, who slew at the battle of Guilford the gallant Col. 
Webster, the pride of the army of Cornwallis. Indeed there is 
scarcely a battle-field in the North or in the South that has not heen 
illustrated by the valor or moistened by the blood of the men of 
Charlotte. And in effecting such patriotic results it is not easy to 
estimate too highly the services of Col. Thomas Read. Nor did his 
military spirit ever forsake him. When, tottering on the brink of 
the grave, he saw his country involved in a second war of inde- 
pendence with her ancient foe, he appealed to the patriotism of 
the young men of Charlotte ; and when he saw them marching to 
the seat of war, he was ready to embrace them in the excess of 
his joy. And when, as he was rejoicing at the ratification of the 
treaty of Ghent, an opponent of the war sarcastically observed 
that he saw in that instrument no article about free trade and sai- 
lors' rights, Read, with more than usual warmth, instantly replied : 
"We don't want an article — we have fought them and we have 
flogged them." 

He was one of the last specimens of a class and of a generation 
now dying out, when personal manners and dress were more re- 
garded than at present. His stature approached six feet, and he 
was large in proportion. His head was broad and full ; his eyea 
were blue, his nose Roman, his chin round and firmly set. He 
wore his hair powdered, and retained the queue which he had worn 
that day when, on a report that Cornwallis was crossing the Dan, 
he marched with the levy en masse of the county of Charlotte to 
oppose his progress. His dress was always neat and even elegant, 
and in society he was the model of an accomplished gentleman.* 
He died on the fourth of February 1817, at Ingleside, his seat on 
Little Roanoke, a stream on the banks of which he was born, and 
on the banks of which he was buried. On his dying bed his wonted 
amenity was still apparent. When a friend, a few moments be- 
fore his death, moistened his speechless lips, he nodded a grateful 
recognition. One overshadowing sorrow darkened his last days. 

He was a member of the Convention of August 1774, that of March, and of 
June 1775, by which last body he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 
fourth Virginia Regiment. At this call of his country he cast aside all the 
civil honors which were within his reach, and hastened with his command to 
the North, where he died from exposure in the public service. 

* A beautiful miniature of Col. Read, done on ivory, is in the possession of 
his grand-niece Mrs. M. L. Comfort of Charlotte. No likeness of Paul Car- 
rington exists. 



THOMAS LEWIS. 109 

A daughter, an only child, the child of his old age, whose voice he 
fondly hoped would soothe his departing spirit, he consigned to 
the grave ; and when, in less than two years after her death, his 
own body was about to be placed by her side, his friends saw in 
the beaten path that led to her solitary tomb beneath the hollies 
of Ingleside whence came the shaft that laid him low. 

No two members of the Convention were more prominent in their 
respective spheres, or displayed a patriotism of a purer stamp, than 
Col. Thomas Lewis of Augusta, and Col. William Cabell of 
Amherst, or, as he was styled in the fashion of the day, of Union 
Hill. Both were men of action rather than of words, had long been 
members of the House of Burgesses, were members of all the Con- 
ventions held previous to the formation of the constitution, and 
were especially efficient in carrying out during the war the plans of 
the Committee of Safety, of the Conventions, and of the govern- 
ment under the constitution. Each was the representative of an 
important and distinct class, the interests of which, though appa- 
rently the same, were in many respects dissimilar, and enjoyed its 
unlimited confidence. Lewis was the representative of the people 
of the extreme west, who, from their position and the habits which 
it induced, were inclined to advance more steadily and with a 
quicker pace to independence than their brethren of the extreme 
east. They shared none of the honors of the Colony ; they had 
come over to the colony at a comparatively recent date, and brought 
with them few of those attachments and prejudices which some of 
the ancestors of the eastern people had brought over and had taught 
their descendants to cherish ; they were full of a martial spirit 
which self-defence rendered necessary, and which had been exhib- 
ited in their Indian contests with signal effect ; they were in a great 
measure unrestricted in their religious privileges, and were practi- 
cally even more than their eastern neighbors an independent peo- 
ple. Their sagacity led them to perceive that their privileges would 
gradually be lost with the increase of population, and that a church 
establishment, to the forms and doctrines of which they were op- 
posed, would ere long be firmly fixed upon them. To such a people, 
living far from the seaboard, and engaged but to a limited extent in 
the cultivation of the great staple which constituted the common 
currency, the idea of taxation even by their own House of Bur- 
gesses, which was beginning to be sensibly felt, was formidable 



110 THOMAS LEWIS. 

enough without the addition of taxation from abroad. The farmer 
who might look upon his fields stocked with cattle, his smoke-house 
bristling with bacon, and his granary full of produce beyond the 
reach of a market, often had very little tobacco for the payment of 
taxes, and rarely a dollar in coin. Hence, on the two great occa- 
sions of opposition to the stamp act in 1765, and of the scheme of 
embodying the militia in the March Convention of 1775, the vote 
of the west decided the victory. And that vote was freely and 
fearlessly cast by Thomas Lewis. Hence that eloquent memorial 
from the Committee of Augusta, presented on one of the first days 
of the session of the Convention now sitting, which denounced the 
conduct of Great Britain, and advised not only the formation of an 
independent state government but a permanent confederation of the 
colonies. That noble paper, which Augusta might put forth as her 
declaration of independence, and which should be equally familiar 
in the cottage and in the college, was presented by Lewis and was 
probably from his pen.* Hence the readiness with which the sons 
of the west rushed from their mountains to meet the enemy, and 
the success which crowned their arms on many a classic field. 

Thomas Lewis was sprung from a stock the history of which is 
the history of the .political and religious persecutions of a memorable 
century in the annals of Christendom. His ancestor was a native 
of France, and in consequence of the religious troubles which ulti- 
mately led to the revocation of the edict of Nantes but before the 
revocation itself, took refuge in Ireland, where in 1678 John, the 
father of Thomas Lewis, was born. John Lewis, the father of four 
children, was living quietly in Donegal, when a painful affair, in 
which he acted with becoming spirit and honor, compelled him to 
fly to Oporto, whence he emigrated to Pennsylvania, whither he was 
followed by his wife and sons, and where he spent the winters of 

*I fear much that this memorial was lost with other public papers during the 
Revolution. The substance of it may be found in the Journal of the Conven- 
tion of 1776 page 11. It was written some time before Congress adopted on 
the 10th of May 1776 a resolution recommending the colonies to form temporary 
governments for domestic affairs and before our own resolution of independence. 
It is the first distinct and responsible proposition in favor of independence and of 
a federal union which I have met with. Some son of Augusta should hunt up 
the records to ascertain its fate. If it exists, it will probably appear among the 
manuscripts in the clerk's office of the House of Delegates, or among those in 
one of the rooms of the Capitol under the charge of the Secretary of the Com- 
monwealth, which I once looked over with another object in view. It is possi- 
ble a copy may be found among the papers of Lewis or of some member of the 
county committee of Augusta. 



THOMAS LEWIS. Ill 

1731 and '32. Thence he immediately removed to Augusta, and 
was with his family among the earliest settlers of that region. It is 
fitly inscribed on the stone which protects the remains of John 
Lewis, that " he furnished five sons to fight the battles of the Revolu- 
tion." A more glorious epitaph could not have been inscribed upon 
it, and a nobler fraternal band never drew sword in the public de- 
fence. Samuel commanded at Braddock's defeat a company of 
Virginians, among whom were three of his own brothers, and aided 
in saving the remnants of an army led to destruction by the wilful- 
ness of a brave but conceited leader. William was distinguished as 
a soldier in the Indian wars and was an officer in the Revolution. 
Charles, the only brother born in Virginia, fell at the battle of Point 
Pleasant, ere victory had yet perched upon the banner of his coun- 
try. Andrew of all the brothers attained the highest rank in the 
military service. He was with Braddock in the company com- 
manded by his brother, was with Grant at Duquesne, and punished 
on the spot the insolence of a man whose cowardice in the field was 
only equalled by his falsehood on the floor of the British parliament, 
was with Washington at Fort Necessity, was commander-in-chief 
at the battle of Point Pleasant, where he achieved a victory which 
rendered the soil of Virginia thenceforth sacred from the foot of 
the savage, — though not till that soil was moistened with the blood 
of a beloved brother — was a member of the Convention of March 
1775 and of that of June following, from which last he received a 
military commission ; and, as brigadier General in the continental 
line, drove, a few days after the adjournment of the Convention 
now sitting, Dunmore from his retreat on Gwyn's island, and 
from the confines of the Commonwealth. He was over six feet 
high, of a noble presence, and of such a stately demeanor that the 
governor of the colony of New York, whither he had gone to nego- 
tiate the treaty of Stanwix, remarked that the earth seemed to 
tremble beneath his tread. It is painful to reflect that such a man 
fell a victim to disease before the independence of his country was 
fully established.* 

Thomas Lewis, of whom it is our province to speak at present, 
though reported by our historians to have been engaged in 
Indian fights, and present at Braddock's defeat, embarked in the 

*Gen. Andrew Lewis died in Bedford on his way home in 1780 of a disease 
contracted by exposure in the low country. 



112 THOMAS LEWIS. 

civil service only of his country.* On the organization of the 
county of Augusta in 1745 he qualified as surveyor, having re- 
ceived his appointment from a board of which President Dawson of 
this College was the head. He entered the House of Burgesses at 
an early age, and in the memorable session of 1765, sustained the 
resolutions of Henry. He was a member of all the Conventions 
including the one now in session. He voted for the resolution in- 
structing the delegates in Congress to propose independence, and 
was one of the committee which prepared the Declaration of 
Rights and the Constitution. He was a member of the first House 
of Delegates under the constitution, and was placed on the com- 
mittee of Religion, to which was assigned the delicate duty of adopt- 
ing a policy which would effectually secure religious freedom. And 
it may be honorably recorded of him, that at a period when some of 
our wisest and purest statesmen hesitated in their course in relation 

*Thomas Lewis is represented by C. Campbell and by the author of the account 
of the Lewis family in the Historical Register as having been engaged in our 
early Indian fights; but I am inclined to believe on the authority of a letter of 
Gen. S. H. Lewis, his grandson, to Samuel Price esq., dated April 6, 1855, that 
the defective sight of Thomas prevented him from joining his gallant brothers in 
the field. With the aid of glasses, which he always used, he was hardly able 
to tell an Indian from a white man at the distance of twenty paces. The letter 
alluded to above says : " I have heard that he was six feet in height, robust but not 
inclined to corpulency; his eyes and hair were dark ; his complexion fair. I 
have heard him spoken of as a handsome, fine-looking man. The caste of his 

Erofile I cannot describe, but I do not think it was Roman or aquilinej; as I have 
eard it said that my elder brother, Thomas, resembled him in features. He 
was exceedingly near-sighted, and was under the necessity of using glasses 
habitually. There is no family portrait extant of him that I know of. He was 
of a grave and serious temper; strict, perhaps rigid in his notions of moral and 
religious duty. Though a supporter of, and a regular attendant upon the ser- 
vices of the established church, he was not a communicant. He was possessed 
of a libera] education, and was probably one of the best mathematicians of his 
day in the state. He had a literary taste, and, when not engaged in business or 
occupied with company, was generally to be found in his library. His collec- 
tion of books was very extensive and valuable, embracing many of the most 
important works then extant in history, biography, moral philosophy, political 
economy, national law, theology and poetry. In his theological department 
were Tillotson, Barrow, South, ' the Boyle Lecture,' and other standard works 
of the English church. He was born in Donegal county, Ireland, on the 27th of 
April 1718, and died at his residence in Rockingham county on the Shenandoah 
river, three miles from Port Republic, on the 31st day of January, 1790. In his 
will he fixed the place on his own estate where he wished to be buried, and 'de- 
sired that the Burial service might be read from the book of Common Prayer by 
his friend Peachy Gilmer.' He died of a cancer in the face. He was 1 have 
always understood the eldest son of John Lewis. He married on the 26th Jan- 
uary 1749 Jane, the daughter of William Strother esq. of Stafford county, 
whose estate opposite to Fredericksburg joined the residence of the father of 
Gen. Washington, with whom (G. W.) she was a school-mate, and nearly of the 
same age. She died in September 1820. Thomas and Jane Lewis brought up 
a family of thirteen children." 



WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 113 

to a church establishment to which he was attached, he went hand 
in hand with Jefferson, and approved those measures which ulti- 
mately led to the passage of the act concerning Religious Freedom. 
In grateful obedience to the mandate of the Augusta memorial he 
warmly upheld the scheme of a confederation, and voted for the 
Articles proposed by Congress for the consideration of the states. 
At a later day, when the federal constitution was submitted for 
the ratification of the states, he was a member of the Convention 
called to decide upon it ; but, though solicitous to connect the 
states in the closest bonds, and in unison with most of his com- 
peers 'who had supported the resolutions of Henry against the 
Stamp Act and his resolutions for embodying the militia, he re- 
fused to vote for the adoption of that instrument until certain 
amendments which he deemed essential to the preservation of the 
rights of the states were adopted. 

It has been observed that Thomas Lewis and William Cabell 
were the representatives of distinct and important interests in the 
colony. Cabell lived upon his patrimonial estate on the banks of 
the upper James, was, though distant from tide, a large slaveholder, 
and a tobacco planter, and, though from his position having certain 
affinities with the west, was in the main from interest and sympa- 
thy intimately connected with the east. His father was an Eng- 
lishman, once a surgeon in the British navy, and he himself, though 
liberal in his religious views, adhered to the church of England ; 
but, as his father had settled in the colony a short time only before 
the father of Lewis came over, he had not fallen heir to that 
legacy of prejudices which beset many of the descendants of the 
earlier settlers. William Cabell, the father of William Cabell of 
Union Hill, arrived in the colony about 1720, and, having taken 
up lands on both sides of the James in the present counties of Am- 
herst, Nelson, and Buckingham, laid in that region the foundations of 
his fortune. He was a good scholar, and soon surrounded himself 
in his forest home with a noble library. He was skilled in his 
profession, which he practised within a wide sphere, was sagacioui 
in business, was fond of rural sports, and revelled in the play of 
a sportive fancy, the sallies of which yet afford amusement at the 
firesides of his descendants.* Dying at an advanced age in 1774, 
he did not live to hail the advent of Independence ; but, like his 

• Carrington Memoranda. 
8 



114 WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 

contemporary John Lewis, contributed four sons to the eventful 
contest in which it was won. Of those four sons the eldest was 
William, of whom we will speak at length presently; the second 
was Joseph, who was at various times a member of the House of 
Burgesses, especially in 1769, when that body, dissolved by Bote- 
tourt, adopted in the Raleigh Tavern the agreement already alluded 
to, to which his name is attached, and in 1770, when the Burgesses 
uniting with the merchants organised the Mercantile Association, 
which also bears his name. He was a member of the Convention 
of March, of July, and of December 1775, but gave place in May 
1776 to Gabriel Penn, and was subsequently a member of tire As- 
sembly. The third son, John, was a member of the Convention 
of December 1775, and of the Convention of which we are now 
treating. The fourth, Nicholas, engaged in the military service of 
the Revolution, served under the command of La Fayette, was a 
member at various times of the Assembly, and was an active poli- 
tician. Thus did three sons of the elder Cabell serve in the re- 
spective Conventions which were held before the constitution went 
into effect. 

But from this patriotic brotherhood the name of William Cabell 
may be singled out as the one posterity will be most pleased to con- 
template. Under the guidance of his accomplished father he passed 
his early years, availing himself of the literary advantages which 
the paternal mansion afforded. Tall and muscular, his face bearing 
that Roman outline which may yet be traced in his descendants, fond 
of rural sports, skilled in the witchery of horsemanship, courting 
danger as a plaything, and of engaging manners, he was the model 
of the young Virginian of his time. But it is as he appeared at a 
later day in the public councils that we seek to trace him. He 
was then eminently conspicuous as a man of noble presence, of 
gallant bearing, and of undaunted spirit. He was a planter in the 
large acceptation of the word, as it was understood rather in the 
interior than on the seaboard, which included not only the culti- 
vation of a staple, and its ordinary agricultural aspects, but the 
construction of the instruments and the preparation and manufac- 
ture of articles, which the eastern planters of that day, like many 
of their successors, were content to find ready made to their hands. 
He fashioned his iron on his own stithy ; he built his houses with his 
own workmen ; he wove into cloth the wool from his own sheep 



WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 115 

and the cotton from his own patch; he made his shoes out of his 
own leather. He managed his various estates with that masterly 
skill with which a general superintends an army, or a statesman 
the interests of a community entrusted to his charge. What Wash- 
ington was on the banks of the Potomac, Cabell was on the banks 
of the upper James. Nor was the hospitality of Mount Vernon, 
if by the splendor of its exhibitions it eclipsed that of the more 
modest Union Hill, more cordial, more comprehensive, or more 
refined. There were indeed many traits of resemblance between 
the owners of those two fine estates, which, as they were from 
their unrivalled location the objects of the admiration of all who 
beheld them, and were the abodes of the elegance and taste of 
their accomplished hosts, have a sanctity thrown over them as the 
depositories of the ashes of the sacred dead.* The caste of their 
characters was much the same. They were nearly of the same 
age, were marked by their lofty stature which exceeded six feet, 
by the uncommon strength of their sinewy frames, by their perfect 
horsemanship, by their entire self-possession, no unfrequent con- 
comitant of well-braced nerves, in times of peril, and by a grave 
and stately demeanor, controlled indeed by the occasion, but verg- 
ing in a state of repose to sternness, carried into the daily offices 
of the house and the plantation the strictest system, and were pas- 
sionately fond of rural life. Washington, who was born poor, sal- 
lied into the forest with a compass in his hand which in a spirit of 
adventure he exchanged for the sword; but when wealth devolved 
upon him, that sword was soon turned into a pruning-hook, and the 
Indian fighter became the farmer of Mount Vernon. Cabell, who 
was the elder by two years, born rich, engaged at once in his favo- 
rite pursuit, and prosecuted it with that strict attention to details 

* The mansion of Mount Vernon, if not more capacious, was more costly 
than the dwelling at Union Hill; but the estate of Union Hill far surpassed in 
value that of Mount Vernon. " It occupied the beautiful and fertile valley of 
the James from the mouth of Tye River down to the head of the Swift Islands, 
a distance of six miles. About the midway of this valley and on a fine swel- 
ling hill overlooking it, Col. Cabell erected his spacious dwelling, which com- 
manded a view of the rich bottoms of the James, the ivy cliffs on the opposite 
side, and the gentle river flowing between them, and the distant mountains 
sinking down and disappearing in the southwestern horizon. The selection of 
the site was as creditable to Col. Cabell as a man of taste as his methodical 
habits were to him as a man of business. It has been stated that he held at 
one time twenty-five thousand acres of the best land in the present counties of 
Nelson and Amherst." Letter of J. C. Cabell, esq., to F. N. Cabell, esq. 



116 WILLIAM CABELL OF UHION HILL. 

which was shown in the management of Mount Vernon.* Both 
were looked upon as the social representatives of their respective 
regions of country, and were unsurpassed in the baronial expanse 
of their hospitality, and in the generous courtesy with which it was 
dispensed. t Both appeared early in the House of Burgesses, and, 
though differing at times in the choice of the means or mode of 
resistance, manifested equal sensitiveness to foreign aggression. 
Both were members of the body in 1769 when it was dissolved by 
Botetourt, and signed the agreement put forth by the members, 
and were members of the House of Burgesses the following year 
and recorded their names, on the roll of the Mercantile Association. 
If Washington in the March Convention of 1775 sustained the 
resolutions of Henry for putting the colony into a posture of de- 
fence, Cabell, who looked at affairs rather with the eyes of a poli- 
tician than of a soldier, opposed them, preferring the scheme of 
a regular army presented by Col. Nicholas. When all minor topics 
were merged amid the clash of arms, if Washington was called to 
military service abroad, Cabell was charged as a member of the 
Committee of Safety with the civil and military control of the col- 
ony. If the previous life of Washington had qualified him to act 
with effect in the field, the services of Cabell as a member of the 
House of Burgesses, as county-lieutenant, as a man of business 
intimately conversant with the resources of the colony, and as a 
statesman who had closely watched the progress of the public 
troubles, and his personal intrepidity, pointed him out as the fit 
compeer of those eminent men into whose hands at the dawn of 
the war the public interests were confided. There were also about 
both that prestige, that undefinable contexture of physical and 
moral qualities, which, though neither of them spoke at length in 

* The Diary of Col. Cabell, written in his own neat and beautiful hand, from 
1769 to 1795, is still extant, and " attests his methodical habits as a planter and 
man of business. It records the daily operations and occurrences on the vari- 
ous plantations on his home estate, all of which in the active period of his 
life he visited regularly on horseback twice in the course of the day." His 
diary for 1782 is, by the kindness of Henry Carrington, esq., now before me. 

■f " His dwelling was the theatre of a magnificent hospitality, embracing 
his poorer as well as his more wealthy countrymen. He was singularly gifted 
with the talent of entertaining large companies. On occasions where his guests 
were very numerous, he would divide them into two apartments, attending per- 
sonally to them in succession, quietly and without seeming effort, providing 
for all, and making all easy, contented, and happy." Ibid. 



WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 117 

deliberative bodies, insensibly swayed the feelings of their contem- 
poraries, and which caused their opinions to be regarded not only 
as the opinions of individuals but as those of large and leading 
classes of the people. That both of them shared the unbounded 
confidence of the people is assuredly true ; and it is equally true 
that under every temptation in war and peace they richly deserved 
it. Both lived to behold the light of peace, and to receive the 
reward of all their toils in their country's service. Both cherished 
with equal warmth the union of the states ; but while Washington 
in common with nearly all the military men of the Revolution sus- 
tained the federal constitution formed by the body of which he was 
the president, Cabell, who was a member of the Virginia Conven- 
tion called to pass upon it, sympathising warmly with the opinions 
of nearly all the most distinguished statesmen of the same era 
who had held no executive post either in the field or on the bench, 
sternly refused to vote for the ratification of that instrument with- 
out the security of a pledge of previous amendments. And it 
ought to be observed, as a striking fact in the history of these two 
men, and worthy of remembrance, and which rarely happened in the 
case of men engaged for a long series of years almost exclusively 
in the public service, that, with all the drafts which an unlim- 
ited hospitality drew upon their time and their means, and with 
all the risks which the frequent absence of proprietors from their 
estates renders unavoidable and perilous, both by a thorough do- 
mestic generalship waxed rich, flourished apace, and bequeathed 
a princely fortune to their heirs. 

It has been stated that Col. Cabell was long a member of the 
House of Burgesses. He was a member of all the Conventions 
held previously to that of May 1776, and in this last mentioned 
Dody, in which he voted for the resolution instructing the delegates 
of Virginia in Congress to propose independence, he was one of 
the celebrated committee appointed to draft a Declaration of Rights 
and a plan of government, and gave to both those important docu- 
ments his cordial support. When the government under the Con- 
stitution went into operation, he was returned to the Senate from 
the Amherst district, and was subsequently a member of the House 
of Delegates. His public life may be said to have closed with the 
adjournment of the Federal Convention ; but from an interchange 
of opinions with his distinguished contemporaries, whose letters 



118 WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 

compose the materials from which will be gathered the story of the 
age,* he was always abreast of his times. In the active super- 
vision of his estates, in the dispensation of a generous hospitality, 
as the venerable and venerated presiding justice of the county in 
which he lived, delighted to behold the success of the institutions 
which he and his compeers had founded, and cheered by the hope 
of their perpetuity, esteemed by the purest and wisest men of the 
age, and revered by his neighbors who knew him longest and who 
loved him best, and in the midst of his children and grandchildren, 
he spent his last days in peace and joy.t He lived to see his 
eldest son, who had served with honor as a lieutenant colonel in 
the army of the Revolution, and who had been his colleague in the 
Federal Convention, the representative of his district in the Con- 
gress of the United States; but he little dreamed that one of 
those grandchildren, now gamboling on the turf of Union Hill, 
now prattling on his knee, and who bore his name, would become 
not only a. member of the House of Delegates, and a member of 
the House of Representatives and of the Senate of the United 
States under that Constitution which he so warmly opposed, but 

* Letter of George Mason to Col. Cabell. Va. Hist. Register, vol III, 84 ; 
letters of R. H. Lee to same. Ibid, vol. II, 20. 

t If Adam Smith declared in his lectures delivered in the University of Glas- 
gow that he was glad to know that Milton wore latchets instead of buckles in 
his shoes, the young Virginian may fitly inquire into, the dress of our revolu- 
tionary fathers. A letter before me thus describes Col. Cabell as he appeared 
in his old age : " He was six feet high, with large frame, well formed, of erect 
carriage, and rather corpulent in the latter part of his life. His features were 
remarkable for strength ; his nose was slightly aquiline ; his forehead was capa- 
cious and well developed, and his head became bald as he advanced to old age. 
There was nothing peculiar in his dress, being that of the planters and farmers 
of good condition of his day ; namely, a round hat, a white cambric stock 
buckled behind, a long-tailed coat, a single-breasted waistcoat with Hap pockets, 
short breeches buckled at the knees, long stockings, and shoes with large buck- 
les. The habitual expression of his countenance was grave, thoughtful, and 
dignified. He was generally taciturn ; but in entertaining his friends and ac- 
quaintance, he became affable and communicative ; and he possessed the hap- 
py talent of adapting his conversation to the ages and conditions of his 
associates. His thoughts, however, were always briefly expressed, and bore the 
impress of the sound judgment and powerful mind with which he was gifted. 
His appearance was eminently dignified and commanding; in this respect he 
was equal, if not superior to any one I have ever seen, save Mr. Jefferson and 
Mr. Clay." The dress above described was worn by Col. Cabell towards the 
close of the century. His dress at the Revolution was rather different, and 
consisted of a cocked hat, a single-breasted coat with wide sleeves studded 
with buttons about the cutis, and with large pocket flaps and a standing collar, 
a double-breasted waistcoat, with wide pocket flaps, descending to the hips, 
buckskin breeches fastened at the knee, and high boots with tassels. His hair 
was powdered, and a long' queue dangled behind. He was born in March 1730 
and died in the spring of 1798. 



WILLIAM CABELL OF UNION HILL. 119 

the accredited envoy of his country at the court of France at a 
period when the crown of that kingdom was plucked from the head 
of one Bourbon, and, mainly through his advisement and that of La 
Fayette, placed on the head of another Bourbon, and, after a lapse 
of years, an envoy at the same court when the crown was plucked 
once more from the head of a Bourbon — and forever — and placed 
upon the head of a man who with his name possessed some of the 
qualities of the young general whose dazzling victories on the soil 
of Italy had surpassed the glory of ancient time, whose triumphs 
he had hailed with applause, and who he fondly but alas! vainly 
hoped would build upon solid foundations in the old world institu- 
tions similar to those which he himself had helped to lay in the 
new.* 

In looking over the Convention one noble head was seen, which 
might well attract the observation of every admirer of genius and 
worth, and especially of every lover of this institution. It was the 
head of a man who was the delegate of this city in the body, and 
though represented by his substitute in the earlier part of its ses- 
sion,! appeared before its close, and bore an honorable part in its 
proceedings. He had been a student of this College, its repre- 

* The Hon. William Cabell Rives is the grandson of Col. Cabell. The late 
William H. Cabell, President of the Court of Appeals, who was the son of 
Nicholas Cabell, was his nephew. But of all who have borne the name of 
the patriarch of Union Hill, none surpassed in native genius the late William 
Cabell Carrington of Richmond, a great grand-nephew, who died suddenly in 
that city in the winter of 1851 in the thirtieth year of his age. He was the son 
of Henry Carrington esq. of Charlotte, was educated at Hampden Sidney and at 
the University of Virginia, studied law, and, having selected the press as the 
scene of his labors, conducted the Richmond Times with an ability and a grace 
that were instantly recognized abroad, and were duly appreciated at home. 
The intelligence of the death of no young man since the death of Dabney 
Carr and John Thompson ever fell more sadly on the public ear. He was a 
member elect of the House of Delegates from Richmond, and was about to 
embark in a career for which his admirable talents eminently qualified him, 
when he was suddenly cut off. I knew him from his youth, admired his vir- 
tues, beheld with pride his advancing fame, and deeply deplored his death. 
And now when I compare him with others, I the more regret his fate, and can 
truly say : Heu quanto minus cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse ! 

| Whenever a member of the various Conventions was appointed a delegate to 
Congress, he did not vacate his seat, which was filled during his absence by a 
substitute chosen by the people, who withdrew on his return. In the Conven- 
tion of December 1775 the substitute of Wythe was Joseph Prentis. In the 
present Convention his substitute was Edmund Randolph. George Gilmer was 
the substitute of Thomas Jefferson. On the adoption of the Constitution no 
member of Congress, not even the Treasurer who had held a seat in the House 
of Burgesses for a hundred and sixty years, could hold a seat in either house of 
the General Assembly. As early as 1758 Wythe represented William and Mary 
in the House of Burgesses. 



120 GEORGE WYTHE. 

sentative eighteen years before in the House of Burgesses, one of 
its official visitors, and subsequently became one its of most distin- 
guished professors, had long held the foremost rank in the House of 
Burgesses of which he had been clerk, and at the bar of the General 
Coart, and had borne a capital part through all the stages of that 
contest which was now to be settled by the sword. It is needless 
to say that such characteristics met in one man only, and that man 
was George Wythe. He was in the fiftieth year of his age. He 
may be said to have inherited a literary turn, as his maternal an- 
cestor Keith, who had emigrated to the colony toward the latter 
part of the previous century, had devoted much of his time to let- 
ters, and had recorded his essays in a folio volume seen by Call, 
which may still be extant, and which would exhibit some curious 
specimens of our early literature.! His paternal ancestor, Thomas 
Wythe, as early as 1718, was a member of the House of Burgesses, 
in which he represented for many years the county of Elizabeth 
City, where in 1726 George Wythe was born. He was the second 
son, and it is reported that, having lost his father in infancy, he was 
taught Latin by his mother, and even Greek; and it is not improba- 
ble that a tender mother, anxious for the progress of her orphan 
child, adopted a plan which had long been recommended by Locke 
in his tract on education, (which, by the way, was better known 
then than now,) and may occasionally have held a translation in 
her hand while her boy was toying with the original ; but that she 
or any one else ever seriously taught him Latin or Greek in early 
life is out of the question; for, at a much later period, perhaps in 
middle life, certainly when his hand-writing was matured, and he 
was studying the Iliad at a time when the English of all Greek 
words could be reached only through the Latin, his manuscripts 
still extant show that he had not advanced far enough to spell the 
most common Latin words correctly. He served his apprentice- 
ship to the law under his uncle John Lewis of Prince George ; but, 
coming into the possession of a respectable estate by the death of 
his elder brother and of his mother, he led a careless life, and 
wasted in idleness some years of his ) r outh — precious years, the 
loss of which he deplored to his dying day. All his substantial ac- 
quisitions were the work of after life. The intimate friend of Fau- 

*Call probably saw the book in possession of Mr. Wythe. As Major Duval 
was the executor of Wythe, it is possible his executor may be able to trace it. 



GEORGE WYTHE. 121 

quier and Small, he became enamored of that learning which 
imparted to their conversation its richness and beauty ; and, as he 
saw that classical quotation was the countersign not only of scholars 
but of intelligent and well-bred men abroad, he resolved to repair 
the defects of his early education. That he ultimately attained to a 
respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek is certain ; and his 
warmest admirers may fairly concede that he did not reach that 
critical skill in the learned tongues which is rarely compassed by 
those who slight them in youth. But his literary accomplishments, 
great in themselves, were yet greater by a comparison with those 
of his contemporaries ; and he was able to draw from the inexhausti- 
ble sources of ancient eloquence and poetry those pleasures which 
were the pride of his manhood and the delight of his old age. Nor 
was his eminent merit founded on his mere literary acquisitions. In 
the solid learning of the law he stood, with the exception of Thom- 
son Mason, almost alone. As a speaker he was always able, often 
most impressive, and at times even eloquent. His preparations 
were made with conscientious care, and he was most successful in 
presenting his case in its best aspect; but he sometimes lost under 
the cross-fire of skillful opponents his self-possession in reply, and 
not unfrequently failed to rally until the day was lost. But the 
crowning graces of this good man were his personal independence, 
which, in a condition of worldly affairs barely removed from want,* 
was unassailable by fear or favor, his love of country, which, nur- 
tured by his contemplations of classic antiquity, knew neither limit 
nor compromise, and the unblemished purity and modesty of his 
character. That miserable fear of risking popularity on any great 
occasion, which, like a spectre, haunts the daily as well as the 
nightly visions of the modern politician, never crossed his mind. 
He was one of the earliest and boldest defenders of the rights of the 
colonies in the House of Burgesses of which he had been a member 
as early as 1758; yet, while he drew during the session of 1764 the 
famous memorial to the House of Commons in terms so strong as 
to excite alarm, and which were pruned down by his more cautious 
compeers, he opposed the resolutions of Henry against the stamp 

* Mr. Wythe lost many of his most valuable negroes during the Revolution, 
and apportioned half of his remaining estate among his relations. His salary 
as sole chancellor of Virginia was long only three hundred pounds, Virginia cur- 
rency, and his official duties forced him to resign in 1789 his professorship in 
William and Mary and to reside in the expensive city of Richmond. 



122 GEORGE WYTHE. 

act the year following on the ground assumed by Pendleton and 
others that the petitions of the previous year had not yet had suffi- 
cient time to work their effect on the minds of the British people, 
and that it was the true policy of the colony to put the ministry as 
far as possible in the wrong. Of all the learned lawyers of the col- 
ony he alone upheld in its utmost extent the view of the relation of 
the colonies with Great Britain which had been maintained by Mr. 
Jefferson in his Summary View. Although he opposed the resolu- 
tions of Henry for putting the colonies into a posture of defence, 
which were adopted by the March Convention of 1775, he approved 
the more efficient scheme of Col. Nicholas. A thread of his quaker 
descent might be clearly traced throughout life in the general con- 
texture of his character, but his patriotism was of too bold a stamp 
to shrink, from the dangers of the field.* Hence he was among the 
first to join a volunteer corps with a musket on his shoulder and 
without a commission in his pocket. To defend his country was so 
paramount a duty in his eyes that mere rank in an army no more 
entered his thoughts than the relative position of his seat in the 
House of Burgesses or at the communion table. He was returned 
by the city of Williamsburg to the December Convention of 1775 ; 
but, as he was absent from the city in attendance on Congress, to a 
seat in which body he had been chosen the August previous, he 
was represented by Joseph Prentis. In June 1776 he strenuously 
supported on the floor of Congress the resolution introduced by the 
Virginia delegation declaratory of independence, and affixed his 
name — where it will be read forever — on the immortal declaration 
of the Fourth of July. It has been observed that he was absent 
during the greater part of the session of the Convention now sitting; 
but he was present near the close, and was appointed one of a com- 
mittee of four to prepare the devices for a seal of the Common- 
wealth, which was done and was approved of by the Convention.! 

* His maternal grandfather Keith was a quaker. 

t As Mr. Wythe bore an active part in Congress in the debate on the resolu- 
tion declaring independence, and signed the declaration of independence of the 
Fourlh of July, it may be proper to show that he was present in the Virginia 
Convention sitting at the same time. The journal of the Convention shows that 
he was appointed on the first of July on the committee to prepare the seal, and 
"was added to the committee to bring in an ordinance for punishing the enemies 
of America," an act to be instantly performed. Now, as a member is never ap- 
pointed to a committee during his absence, and certainly never " added"' to a 
committee already existing unless he were personally present, he must have 
taken his seat in the body. He could not then have signed the declaration of 



GEORGE WYTHE. 123 

Of his subsequent career as the Speaker of the House of Delegates; 
as one of the committee of Revisors ; as a professor of law in this 
college, gathering the gifted youth of his beloved state under the 
shadow of his wing; as a judge of the High Court of Chancery and 
necessarily a judge of the first Court of Appeals, the duties of which 
office he discharged with eminent ability and with a spirit of inde- 
pendence which placed him foremost in pronouncing for the first 
time under the constitution that an act of Assembly in conflict with 
that instrument is null and void;* as sole chancellor, the duties of 
which office he discharged until the time of his death in June 1806, 
with equal ability, with unwearied industry, and with general 
applause, albeit one of his decisions, that memorable one on the va- 
lidity of the British debts, ran counter to a public prejudice almost 
universal; as a member of the Convention which formed the fede- 
ral constitution and of the Convention which ratified that instrument 
in behalf of this Commonwealth; as a sage, diffusing around him a 
taste for philosophy and letters, and instilling into the minds of his 
pupils those principles which impelled them to imitate his virtues 
and even to eclipse the splendor of his fame ;t and of his mournful 
death ; it is not our purpose to speak at large at present. In respect 
of him, however, it is just to say, that in a course of fifty years un- 
interrupted official service, there was no pause in the public affec- 
tion. While the eloquent Richard Henry Lee and the venerable 
Richard Bland, assailed by personal enemies, sought in person from 
the Convention or the Assembly an inquisition into their conduct, 
(which resulted in their honorable acquittal) ; while Harrison and 
Braxton, absent in the public service, were harshly superseded in 
Congress by an ungenerous manoeuvre}: made for the nonce, the 

independence on the fourth of July when it was signed on paper, but probably 
signed it as did Richard Henry Lee on the second of August when it was en- 
grossed on parchment and signed by the members. R. H. Lee, who offered in 
Congress the resolution of independence, and who sustained it in debate, was 
also present on the 1st of July in the Convention, and was also appointed on the 
committee to prepare the seal. It is now well known that some of the signa- 
tures to the Declaration were added some weeks and in one instance some 
months aft^r the fourth of July. 

* See his opinion in the case of the Commonweath vs. Caton and others, 
which, in the language of Call, "will ever be a memorial to his honor." 

f What a patriotic cartoon — a School of Virginia greater than the School of 
Athens — might the brush of the Virginia artist depict in Wythe laying down the 
law in the midst of such pupils as Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Mar- 
shall, James Innis, George Nicholas, Littleton Waller Tazewell, Henry Clay 
and John Wickham ? 

J By reducing the delegation from seven to five. 



124 GEORGE WYTHE. 

breath of suspicion was never blown on the name of Wythe. He 
made no public confession of his religious faith ; and, as Mr. Jeffer- 
son has observed respecting him that "that religion must be good 
which could produce a life of such exemplary virtue," there have 
been doubts of his belief in the Christian system ; but these are at 
once and forever dispelled by the declarations of Mr. Munford, who 
stated, in his eulogy pronounced over the corpse of Wythe in the 
Hall of the House of Delegates, that prayers for the mercies of his 
Redeemer were among his most fervent and latest aspirations. Need 
I recall to this assembly sitting in a hall which has often resounded 
with the echoes of his youthful voice and in which in later years his 
familiar presence has so often been, the form and features of this 
illustrious man such as he was when he took his seat in the Con- 
vention of 1776? Shall I point to that slender form, not emaciated 
and bowed as with thirty additional years' arduous labor on the 
bench and in the closet it subsequently became, but still erect and 
active, that over-arching forehead with its wide, magnificent sweep, 
and those dark grey eyes that beamed beneath it, that Roman nose, 
those finely chiseled lips on which the flame of conscious inspiration 
seems yet to burn, that broad and well defined chin, all making up a 
profile which would be singled out of a thousand as the profile of a 
man whose heart was the home of all the gentle affections, but 
whose intellect owned the supremacy of duty alone ? No, sir, it 
were an idle task. More than a hundred years have passed since 
he first appeared within these walls or received your honors, and 
yet, as his name is on every tongue, so his form is reflected in 
every eye, and his image enshrined in every heart. And let us 
believe and declare, that, when fresh generations a century hence 
shall celebrate, as we do now, the immortal names inscribed on the 
roll of William and Mary, the honors which they accord to the 
worth of George Wythe will be the fairest and fullest measure 
of their own.* 

* Concerning Wythe consult a sketch of his life in Sanderson's Biography of 
the Signers of the "Declaration of Independence, Mr. Jefferson's lettter to San- 
derson and Mr. Jefferson's memoir of himself in the first volume of his writings, 
Mr. Clay's letter to B. B Minor esq. in the new edition of Wythe's Reports, 
and in the Va. Historical Register vol. V. 162, his manuscripts in the Historical 
Society of Virginia, Munford 's funeral oration in the Richmond Enquirer of the 
thirteenth and seventeenth of June 1806, Wirt's Life ot Henry, Call's sketch in 
the fourth volume of his Reports, journals of the House of Burgesses, of Con- 
gress for 1775-'6, of the Conventions, and of the House of Delegates, and our his- 
tories of Virginia, especially Charles Campbell's Introduction; Carrington Memo- 



WYTHE AND PENDLETON COMPARED. 125 

Such was the intimate connection for near half a century be- 
tween Wythe and his great rival on the floor of the House of Bur- 
gesses, at the bar of the General Court, in the Conventions, in the 
House of Delegates, and in their respective courts of which each 
was for near thirty years the presiding justice, and in the public es- 
teem, that the relation which they held toward each other forces it- 
self upon the observer, and is indeed no unimportant part of the his- 
tory of both. Pendleton was five years older than Wythe, was born 
poor, his father dying before he was born, had little or no instruc- 
tion in his early years, and was placed in a clerk's office, the only 
sphere of improvement within his reach. Wythe, though he 
too lost his father in early life, was not destitute of means, and 
shared the supervision of a mother whose association with a father 
noted for his learning led her to appreciate the value of knowledge, 
and, if not to become- the teacher of her son, to aid and encourage 
him in his studies. He also spent a term in this college, and with 
a view of studying law entered the office of an uncle who was en- 
gaged in an extensive practice. Thus far the advantages of fortune 
would seem to be on the side of Wythe ; but these advan- 
tages he wantonly sacrificed, and in this sacrifice may be traced 
the distinctive traits of his future life. Pendleton, who had from 
his youth that elasticity of character which no imaginary burden 
could compress, and that instinctive sagacity in adjusting himself 
to his true position which in after-life stood him in such stead, de- 
voted all his faculties to his employment, and with the fees derived 
from jobs beyond the routine of the desk purchased useful books 
which he studied closely. He saw at a glance that his only hope 
of distinction and wealth lay in success at the bar ; for even the 
successorship of his master, however remote, at a time when the 
clerks of the secretary of the colony were billeted upon the various 
county offices, was wholly out of the question. A clerk's office 
at this day is no mean school of law, and the speeches of counsel 

rnnda. Call and Allen make Wythe speaker of the House of Burgesses, which 
he never was, that office having been filled long before Wythe was a member of 
the body up to the Revolution by two men only: Mr. Speaker Robinson, who 
held it for near twenty years until his death in 1765, when at the ensuing session 
in 1766 Peyton Randolph was elected over Col. R. Bland and held it until the 
house was superseded Dy the Conventions. As stated in the text, Mr. Wythe 
was sometime Clerk of the House. He was the Speaker of the House of Dele- 
gates in 1777. Should it be that he ever filled the chair of the House of Bur- 
f esses, it must have been pro tempore during Peyton Randolph's visit to 
Ingland, which, however, is not probable. 



126 WYTHE AND PENDLETON COMPAKED. 

employed in affairs of real life are no mean substitutes for the lec- 
tures of professors ; but, if such be the case at present, it was 
still more the case under the less complicated practice of the colo- 
nial system. It was almost impossible for a youth of quick part?, 
bent on his advancement in life, who had performed for seven 
years the duties of a clerk, devoting his leisure hours to the study 
of the law, and who had heard for so long a time the speeches of 
the leading counsel of the day, not to become expert in the ordi- 
nary business of the county court lawyer ; and hence in the case 
of Pendleton, as at a later day in the case of Paul Carrington, there 
was hardly an interval between the procuring of a license and a 
heavy docket. With the increase of business came the strict study 
of the principles of each case ; a study from which he was not to 
be diverted by the promptings of idleness, the blandishments of 
pleasure, or even the pursuits of literature. A book was sought 
only for the information touching the case in hand, and, when that 
object was obtained, it was laid aside. What was the result of 
necessity at first, became afterwards a habit and a pleasure, and 
when a volume of Burrow, containing the decisions of Lord Mans- 
field, appeared, he seized upon it with the zest with which a mod- 
ern reader hailed a volume from the author of Waverley, or a work 
from the hand of Macauley ; and he declared to Call in his latter 
days that he did not desire more pleasant reading. But it was for 
adjudicated cases only he sought in the books of the law. For its 
mere literature he had no respect ; and it is probable that it never oc- 
curred to him to inquire whether Fleta was the name of a person or 
a thing, the name of the author of a book or the name of a book;* 
while Wythe had not only scanned the origin of the name, but had 
weighed in his mind the respective claims of the two prominent 
candidates for its authorship. From the County Courts Pendleton 
passed in due time to the General Court where his industry was 
quickened and his emulation excited by a competition with men 
thoroughly conversant with the science and the practice of the 
law which some of them had studied in the Temple. In this new 
school he not only acquired knowledge of the most useful kind, 
and, the greatest of all his acquisitions and for which he was for- 
ever afterwards distinguished, the readiness of making whatever 

* Blackstone quotes Fleta as if he were doubtful of the name. He sometimes 
uses the expression : Fleta says ; and then again as the author of Fleta says. 



WYTHE AND PENDLETON COMPARED. 127 

knowledge he possessed available on the instant. His intimacy 
with the ablest members of the House of Burgesses, which he en- 
tered early, gave a spur to his ambition, and he had not held his 
seat long before his acquaintance with current business and his 
ready and graceful elocution marked him out as one of the rising 
men of the day. Such was the man whom Wythe, reverting to 
his studies after a long truancy, was called on to encounter. From 
what has been said it could easily have been foreseen what the 
result of such an encounter would be. It has rarely happened 
that any man who engaged late in life in a learned profession, and 
certainly such a profession as the law, ever attained to the highest 
degree of excellence in all the requisites which ensure complete 
success. Wythe, whose early advantages were greater than those 
of Pendleton, had allowed the spring-time of life to pass unim- 
proved, and when, as middle life approached, he grappled seriously 
with his studies, he had difficulties to surmount which would have 
obstructed altogether the course of ordinary men, and which his 
genius and application did not entirely overcome. General litera- 
ture he had probably never altogether neglected, perhaps not even 
the literature of the law; but a knowledge of adjudicated cases, 
the subtleties of special pleading, and what may be called the hab- 
its of the bar, were to be learned by him, when these had been 
for years the exclusive meditation of Pendleton, who was five years 
his senior, and who from his twelfth year had never lost a day 
from the eager pursuit of his profession. Moreover, in the physi- 
cal qualities not unessential to success at the bar, Pendleton not 
only excelled Wythe, but most of his contemporaries, for his per- 
son was of the first order of manly beauty, his voice clear and 
silver-toned and under perfect control, and his manners were so 
fascinating as to charm all who came in contact with him. These 
advantages Wythe did not share in an equal degree. Hence the 
only ground of success on which Wythe could build was to lay in 
a greater stock of legal knowledge than that possessed by Pendle- 
ton ; for Pendleton, who had studied law rather as it was to be 
found in the cases than as a system, and may be said rather to have 
known a great deal of law than to have been a master of the 
science, approached nearer the character of a great advocate than 
of a great lawyer ; and it was to this point the studies of Wythe 
were directed, all things considered, with wonderful success. That 



128 WYTHE AND PENDLETON COMPARED. 

he more thoroughly mastered the learning of his profession than 
any of his contemporaries, excepting Thomson Mason, seems to 
be conceded ; yet in his contests with Pendleton, though clad in 
the substantial armor of the law, he not only felt at times the 
point of his lance, and reeled from the shock, but was sometimes 
fairly rolled in the dust. As members of the bar and as politicians 
they shared equally the public esteem ; yet it may appear singular 
that in the latter character they seem to have reversed their rela- 
tive positions toward each other. Wythe might be supposed from 
his love of the weightier matters of the law to have been averse 
from change, and to favor a pacific policy; and Pendleton from 
his habit of regarding the law as a mere instrument for effecting 
his purposes might have been supposed to view changes in law and 
politics as matters of convenience ; yet the reverse proved to be 
true. The first illustration of this difference may be drawn from 
the session of the House of Burgesses of 1764, when Wythe wrote 
the memorial to the Commons in a temper that would have suited 
a much later day ; Pendleton was for modulating its tones to the 
diseased ear of a reckless House of Commons. When the precise 
relation of the colonies to Great Britain became the theme of dis- 
cussion, Wythe boldly contended that the true relation was that 
which Scotland held previous to the act of Union — a common king, 
but nought else in common, while Pendleton halted at what has been 
called the half-way house of John Dickinson. When the constitu- 
tion took effect, both were members of the first House of Delegates, 
and were subsequently placed on the Committee of Revisors ; and 
here their relative positions were signally reversed. Pendleton, the 
architect of his own fortune, clung with death-like pertinacity to the 
law of primogeniture and entails, and to an established church; 
Wythe saw at a glance the incompatibility of such institutions with 
a republican system, and advocated their immediate repeal. Both 
filled the chair of the House for a single session, and each won 
distinction as a presiding officer. On the organization of the new 
judiciary each was called to the highest seat in his respective court, 
and, although their decisions more than once smacked of their 
ancient warfare, were equally acceptable to the people. In the 
Virginia Convention called to discuss the federal constitution, of 
which body Pendleton was the president and Wythe the chairman of 
the Committee of the Whole during its sittings, both voted for the 



WYTHE AND PENDLETON COMPARED. 129 

ratification of that instrument; and this vote is the only enigma in 
the life of Wythe. Pendleton was a man of the world, and trans- 
acted business as a thing to be done ; Wythe was sometimes be- 
guiled by the mode of doing it. Pendleton, who inherited nothing, 
brought his mind to bear on the game of life, and amassed a large 
fortune; Wythe, who inherited a handsome patrimony, died poor. 
Pendleton was strictly a man of talents, and regarded all knowledge 
merely as a means of pursuing his ends with success. Wythe was 
a man of genius, and loved knowledge for its own sake. To under- 
take the acquisition of the learned languages late in life was a he- 
roic aim, from which Pendleton would have shrunk, unless a know- 
ledge of them had been indispensable to. the proper conduct of cur- 
rent business, but which Wythe embraced that he might enjoy at 
the fountain head those pleasures which, as they are the purest, so 
they are the most precious bequests of the genius of the ages that 
are past. Pendleton rarely read an English book beyond the range 
of the law in its ordinary or in its historical aspect. He had pro- 
bably never seen the Fairy Queen or read a book of Paradise Lost. 
He would not have given the value of a dollar in Virginia currency, 
when that currency was at its lowest ebb, 

" To call up him that left half- told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 

He cared very little for stories at all, and still less, if less be possi- 
ble, for the conclusion of a story of which he had not heard the be- 
ginning; and he would have sent Sappho and Aspasia to the work- 
house with the emphatic admonition which the Earl of Wilton gave 
to the ejected nuns : Go, spin ; you jades, go spin. Wythe had 
burrowed so deeply in the heaps of ancient literature — had dwelt so 
long on the ancient classics, some of them out of the common range, 
and on the writers of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian eras, that 
he could hardly refrain from giving a line of Horace the force of an 
act of Assembly, nor could forbear from quoting the authority of 
Aulus Gellius, that prince of tattlers, in a solemn judicial decision; 
and he caught the turns of expression of our old writers, and 
dressed his thoughts in a garb that Raleigh or Vane would have re- 
cognized as his daily wear. Hence, from opposite causes, neither 
of these great jurists ever attained to a graceful mastery of the En- 
glish tongue. The style of Pendleton, as his letters and published 



130 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

writings show, was bald, inelegant, incorrect and often involved, 
and without spirit.* It was only under the excitement of debate 
that his words were combined with some degree of taste and ele- 
gance. The style of Wythe grew more quaint as he grew old, 
and, if more correct than Pendleton's, was not more grateful to 
modern ears. It is remarkable that neither of them ever reached 
the elegance which the casual productions of Patrick Henry's pen 
frequently exhibit. Both received the veneration of the people in a 
degree rarely accorded to the ermine in recent times ; in the per- 
son of Wythe that veneration deejiened into love. Both lived to 
the age of fourscore and died in full harness;! Pendleton gathered 
to his fathers as a sheaf full ripe to the garners ; Wythe perishing 
by a poisonous draught, mixed at his own fireside, and presented by 
a parricidal hand ; — neither leaving a descendant ; and both re- 
ceiving all the honors which a grateful country could bestow upon 
the illustrious dead. For it is unquestionably the peculiar praise 
of these exalted patriots, that, during a term of fifty years' public 
service, they held office, not for their own sake, not for the sake of 
office, but for the sake of their country, t 

Let us now glance at the character of a member of the Conven- 
tion, whose form was long familiar in your streets, who has often 
sat in this hall, who, though not a student of this College, was one 
of its most active and intelligent visitors, who was long the pride of 
the social circles of this city, whose eloquence was the delight of 
the Senate, and whose patriotism illumines one of the proudest 
pages of his country's story. Among the patriotic names distin. 
guished in our early councils none is invested w 7 ith a purer lustre 
than the name of Lee. It is radiant with the glory of the 
Revolution. It has been illustrated by the sword, by the pen, and 
by the tongue. And in the Convention now sitting were two 
brothers w r ho bore the name, and who impressed upon it a dignity, 
which, prominent as it had been for more than a century of colonial 

* His political writings are alluded to. The opinion of Wickham on the pre- 
cision of his language in the revised bills drawn by him, and which was mainly 
technical, has already been quoted. 

t Pendleton died at the age of eighty-two, Wythe at the age of eighty. 

X Since the note on a preceding page was in type, I have ascertained from a 
letter of Wythe to Mr. Jefferson, dated July 27, 1776, which escaped my recol- 
lection at the moment, that Mr. W. appeared in the Convention after the con- 
stitution had been committed to the committee of the whole house. See Burk, 
IV, 151, Note. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 131 

history, it had never borne before. Thomas Ludwell and Rich- 
ard Henry Lee were brothers. Ludwell, the elder of the 
two, held a conspicuous position as a patriot and lawyer, and died 
before the close of the war; but not until he had filled the most re- 
sponsible trusts with fidelity and honor. He had been a member of 
the House of Burgesses, was a member of the Conventions of July 
and December 1775, and was chosen a member of the Committee 
of Safety. He took his seat in the Convention now sitting as a 
member for Stafford, and w r as placed on the committee appointed to 
draft a declaration of rights and a plan of government. On the or- 
ganization of the new govern ment under the constitution he was 
appointed one of the five Revisors, and was elected one of the five 
judges of the General Court.* In the midst of his useful career he 
fell a martyr to disease. But such was the reputation of Richard 
Henry Lee, that the fame of almost all his distinguished brothers 
was lost in the brightness of its blaze. He was born at Stratford, 
his father's seat on the Potomac, on the twentieth of January 1732, 
was put to school in Yorkshire, England, returning home before his 
twentieth year. As early as 1755 he entered the House of Bur- 
gesses, and continued a member at intervals until the w r ar of the 
Revolution. Although a member of the House he w r as not present 
when Henry offered his resolutions against the stamp act, but ap- 
proved their spirit ; and on his return home organized an associa- 
tion for the purpose of resisting the execution of the act.t In 1770 
he was a member of the Mercantile Association so often referred to; + 
and in 1773 he was one of the Committee of Correspondence called 
into existence mainly by his influence, and in 1774 was deputed to 
the first Congress where he made one of the most brilliant displays 
of his eloquence. The prominent part which he sustained in Con- 
gress of which he was a member at intervals until that body was 
superseded by the adoption of the federal constitution, and of which 
he was for a time the president, is now known to all. The recol- 
lections of his able state-papers, of his speeches, and especially of 
that patriotism, which glowed the fiercer amid the sternest trials, 

* The other judges were Joseph Jones, John Blair, Thomson Mason, and 
Paul Carrington. 

] For a copy of the Westmoreland Association see Va. Historical Register Vol 
II, 14. 

}Va. Hist. Register Vol. Ill, 18. 



132 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

are among the most precious in the estimation not only of this com- 
monwealth but of the country at large.* 

And here it is proper to animadvert to the popular error sanc- 
tioned by the authority of the eloquent and patriotic author of 
the life of Patrick Henry, which is in substance that in the con- 
tinental Congress the lustre of Lee's fame was dimmed by his in- 
ability to write in a manner commensurate with his reputation as 
a public speaker. A more grievous mistake was never made by 
one man of genius in estimating the merits of another. That such 
was apparently the case with Patrick Henry may be granted ; 
though in his case even, much, very much must be conceded to 
indolence and an insuperable aversion from the labors of the closet; 
for we are told by Mr. Jefferson, not that Henry was too indolent 
to write papers, but that he could not be prevailed upon to read 
papers when written by others ; but the case of Lee was widely 
diverse. The opinion of his age and of his contemporaries in 
Congress was wholly different from the modern notion ; and this 
opinion was exhibited in Congress in a mode that admits of no dis- 
pute : for to Lee was committed the preparation of the most impor- 
tant papers of the times, and these papers were approved in many 
instances without alteration or amendment, and adopted by the 
body. If we look at the number of those drawn by Lee, their 
adaptedness to the occasion, the accurate knowledge of law and fact 
which they exhibit, their temperate yet animated spirit, the ease 
and elegance of their style, we know not, if called on to select 
from the names of the most eminent men who had then excelled 
alike on the floor of parliament and in the closet, after excepting 
Bolingbroke and Burke, where his superior among men of the Eng- 
lish race can be found. The origin of the common error may be 
readily seen. In the first place, the authorship of the great pa- 
pers of the revolutionary era written in our state as well as in our 
national councils, though known at the time, had slipped from the 
public mind, was unsupported by written evidence, and, until re- 

* See the life of R. H. Lee by his grandson, in which his congressional career 
is dwelt upon at length. With the exception of a notice of Wythe, Nelson and 
Harrison, in a work called the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
Wirt's Life of Henry, and Tucker's Life of Jefferson, there is no other biography 
of any member of the Convention, and this consideration has led me more into 
detail in this discourse than would otherwise have been necessary. Not even 
Madison has a biographer. There are two men living, either of whom could 
perform the task well. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 133 

cently, was almost unknown. The examination of manuscripts 
and the publication of papers from private depositories have within 
a few years past shed much light upon the subject. It should be 
remarked, in the second place, that those who look into the reports 
of the Revolution for that elaborate argumentation and exquisite 
polish which mark the great state-papers of the present day, will 
be disappointed. Most of the papers of that day were written on 
the epur of the moment in a spirit of business, and were never re- 
vised by their authors ; nor should it be overlooked that long state- 
papers written rather in the style of an eclectic professor than of a 
practical statesman, is wholly the growth of modern times, and, 
we may add, of recent American growth. The most famous pro- 
ductions of British statesmen, even on questions of the greatest 
moment, are relatively brief. The letters of Jefferson to Hammond 
and of Madison to Erskine, which were justly deemed master- 
pieces of diplomatic writing, savor in their brevity of their British 
models. The long and elaborate disquisition of recent papers, their 
rhetorical embellishments, the popular appeals flashing through 
them, which show that the writers were evidently looking beyond 
their present purpose, however suited to the sphere of the stately 
review, or excellent as specimens of demonstrative eloquence, 
may be justly arraigned at the bar of a correct literary or practical 
taste. Of this gaudy ambition not the slightest trace appears in the 
papers of the Revolution. These were written by men who were 
thoroughly conversant with the facts of the case in hand and with 
the learning applicable to them, who were dealing with the most 
serious issues, and who sought the single object of making upon the 
minds of others the impression of their own. Mawkish sensibility, 
meretricious ornament or artifice, the turn of a period or the beauty 
of an illustration, had no charm in the eyes of men who well knew 
that, if they failed to be successful in the struggle in which they 
were engaged, their fortunes would be confiscated, their families 
exposed to want, and themselves destined to the gibbet or to the 
tender mercies of a prison-ship. With such men statesmanship 
was, as indeed it really is, nothing more than the means of doing 
the public business, whether with the tongue or the pen, as 
public business ought to be done — speedily, effectually, and honora- 
bly. It was this masterly execution that called forth the gratula- 
tions of Chatham. Now one of the papers which kindled the enthusi- 



134 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

asm of Chatham is said to have been from the pen of Lee.* If we 
were required to point out a paper of that epoch, which possessed 
the double merit of including all the qualities which a public writing 
ought to possess, and of excluding all that it ought not, we would 
refer to the Address to the inhabitants of the colonies put forth by- 
Congress at the close of the September session of 1774. This pa- 
per, fit to be placed by the side of the Declaration of Independence, 
is one and one only of the able papers from the pen of Lee.t 
Another paper in the form of an Address from the twelve united 
colonies, by their delegates in Congress, to the inhabitants of Great 
Britain, drawn by Lee, is one of the noblest of the period. $ Whether 
we respect its correct style, the selection and arrangement of its 
topics, its fine argumentation, or the patriotic glow which pervades 
the whole, it merits the highest praise. Of the numerous papers 
on the gravest questions of the day, which were written by Lee 
during a congressional term which reached with intervals from 1774 
to 1788, we have not leisure to speak. Had Wirt, whose venera- 
tion of the genius of others was a pure and unconscious reflection 
of his own, lived to behold the claims of Lee to the authorship of 
the papers in question and of others equally as able fully estab- 
lished, he would have rejoiced to heap honor on a man whose dis- 
tinctive merit it was that, above all his contemporaries, he united 
in his person in a supreme degree the various and rare qualities of 
the accomplished writer to those of the consummate orator and of 
the profound statesman. 

The accidental presence of Lee in the present Convention ex- 
cited the deepest interest. He had been suddenly called from 
Congress by the illness of his wife ; || but, before he retired, 
he had proposed the resolution declaring independence in obedience 
of the instructions of the Convention now sitting, and by his mas- 
terly eloquence had sustained it, amid the misgivings of the weak 
and the fears of the cautious, triumphantly in debate. And, when 
he was about taking his seat in Convention, the Declaration of In- 
dependence, the offspring of his resolution, was about to be pro- 

* Life of R, H. Lee bv his grandson. 

t Life of R. H. Lee, Vol, I, 119. 

X Ibid, Vol. I, 143. 

|| George Mason had written to him earnestly beseeching him to leave Con- 
gress and come to the Convention. See letter of Mason to Lee dated May 18, 
1776 in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 135 

claimed, and was eagerly expected by the members who maybe said 
to have called it into existence.* He was the only member of Con- 
gress, who was also a member of the body, except Wythe and Nel- 
son, that was present during the session, and he had arrived too late 
for the discussion on the declaration of rights and the plan of gov- 
ernment, both of which had already been adopted; but it is proba- 
ble that the beautiful prayer which the Convention substituted in 
the liturgy for the prayer in behalf of the king and the royal family 
was from his classic pen. It is to be deplored, that of all his elo- 
quent speeches, delivered on the most interesting topics in the 
course of a parliamentary career embracing more than the third of 
a century, not a solitary specimen has survived him. When Wil- 
liam Pitt, in the midst of a brilliant coterie of scholars who were 
regretting the lost works of philosophers, orators, and poets, was 
asked what work of the genius of the past he would soonest recall 
from oblivion, he promptly answered ; A speech of Bolingbroke's. 
The lover of Virginia, who truly estimated the genius of her most 
accomplished son, and who remembered the numerous occasions 
which were illustrated by his eloquence, would have said : A 
speech of Lee's. 

One incident in his life, most painful in some of its aspects, as 
deeply wounding the sensibilities of a patriot and a man of honor, 
demands a passing review. It should be observed that Lee, though 
descended from one of the oldest and most honorable families of 
the colony, did not inherit any large share of the affections of the 
people. His ancestors on both sides of the house had indeed filled 
high offices time immemorial; but they had been in all things the 
bigotted devotees of the established church and of a kingly govern- 
ment. A change had now passed over the spirit of the people. 
In revolutions, it has been truly said, men live fast, and not only 
discard instantly opinions in which they had long acquiesced, but 
trend to the opposite extreme. The Revolution of 1776 had fresh- 

* The first printed statement of the adoption of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence of the fourth of July hy Congress was made in the Virginia Gazette of 
the 19th of July; when a synopsis only of its contents was published. The 
document in full was first published in the Gazette of the 26th of July by an 
order of Council, and the sheriff of each county was enjoined to proclaim it at 
the door of his court-house on the first court day after he shall have received 
it. The order was signed by Archibald Blair as clerk of the Council. It is 
probable that the passage of the Declaration was known by private letters as 
early as the 10th or 12th of the month. See the Virginia Gazette of the above 
dates in the State Library. 



136 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

ened in the general mind the recollections of the Revolution of 1676, 
and it was well-known that the maternal ancestor of Lee was the 
active accomplice of Sir William Berkeley, and was responsible in 
some degree for the merciless butcheries perpetrated by that imbe- 
cile tyrant. The blood of the patriotic Bland, of the gallant Hans- 
ford, and of the inflexible Drummond, could still be seen, through 
the haze of a century, sticking to his skirts. The fathers of the 
men then on the stage remembered to have heard from the mouths 
of men who had seen the blue flag of Monmouth raised in the 
public square of Taunton and who had been present at Sedgemoor,* 
and through the emigrants from Barbadoes, of the judicial murders 
of Jeffries at the close of Monmouth's rebellion ; but, execrable as 
was the conduct of the British judge, they deemed the conduct of 
Berkeley more execrable still ; for Jeffries, so far from having in 
his pocket, as Berkeley had, a pardon for the unfortunate criminals 
whom he slew, was acting under the express instructions of the 
king. Nor did it mend matters in the common mind that Lee's an- 
cestor, Ludwell, had married the widow of the tyrant. It was be- 
lieved that one of his ancestors had sought Charles the Second in 
his retirement at Breda, and offered him the throne of Virginia; 
and, although this report is now classed among the fables that long 
obscured that portion of our early history, its fallacy was not then 
detected. Nor were the grounds of hostility to the family purely 
historical. Dissenters had increased rapidly in the colony, and 
among the inhabitants of the Northern Neck were many persons 
of this description who could not fail to remember with emotions of 
the keenest resentment the persecution which they had endured 
from the friends of the church, and that it was the father of Rich- 
ard Henry Lee who, as a member of the Council, had not only 
driven the pious and eloquent Rodgers out of the colony, but had 
threatened to withdraw his license to preach the gospel of Jesus 
Christ from one more eloquent still, whom they regarded as the 
apostle of a true faith, the gifted Davies. What aggravated the 
conduct of Thomas Lee, the father of Richard Henry, was that he 
persisted in his illiberal course in opposition to the royal governor, 
whose peculiar province it was to decide upon the meaning of the 
act of toleration, and who had leaned to the side of religious free- 

* See letter of James the Second to Effingham in C. Campbell's History, 
page 99. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 13 7 

dom. Nor could it be forgotten that Richard Henry Lee himself 
had faltered in the dawn of the troubles with the mother country, 
and that, versed as he was in constitutional lore, and capable of 
forming an opinion of the legality of acts of parliament, he had 
in an evil hour, when the stamp act was about to be passed, at the 
mature age of thirty-two, warmly urged his claims to one of the 
offices to be created by it. It was true that upon more deliberate 
reflection he had changed his mind, and had opposed the execution 
of that measure with zeal and ability ; and had subsequently main- 
tained the rights of the colonies with a boldness that courted dan- 
ger and with eloquence almost unrivalled ; but the people whose 
voice now controlled public affairs, had never heard his eloquent 
speeches, which were delivered in the House of Burgesses, in 
Carpenter's Hall, and in the Hall of Independence, and not before 
them. Nor had they read them ; for the newspapers of that day 
were few, and were so small that a single speech of an hour's 
length would fill half a dozen weekly issues. At the moment of 
which we are speaking, it was, moreover, uncertain whether the 
great struggle of our fathers for the rights of Englishmen would 

O Do O O 

be called a Revolution or a Rebellion ; and, as an element in the 
excited state of the times, it may be mentioned that the contest 
between the church and a majority of the people who were op- 
posed to the church, was then waging in popular meetings, in ec- 
clesiastical bodies, and on the floor of the General Assembly.* And 
it was well known that Lee was one of the ablest friends of the 
church. Hence, if any occasion for an attack on the character of 
this eminent man should arise, there was much in the antecedents of 
his race and in his religious attachments to be seized upon to inflame 
the popular mind against him. And an occasion soon arose. Dur- 
ing the session of the General Assembly in 1777, the election of the 
members of Congress was held, and it was ascertained on counting 
the ballots that Lee was superseded. The fact that five other per- 
sons had received more votes than himself would at any time have 
w T ounded his pride and his sense of justice; but, in the absence of 
any serious charge against him, would have afforded no ground for 
animadversion. It appeared, however, that either in conversation 

* Mr. Jefferson thought that the Dissenters at the date of the Revolution 
composed a majority o( the people. Mr. Madison was inclined to think that 
Mr. J. over estimated their numbers. Tucker's Jefferson and Jefferson's Me- 
moirs. 



138 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

or in debate malignant and scandalous hints and inuendoes, to use 
his own language, were cast upon his character, and doubtless af- 
fected the result. He instantly withdrew from Congress to Chan- 
tilly, was immediately returned to the Assembly, and hastened to 
take his seat in the House of Delegates. He promptly demanded 
from the General Assembly an investigation into his conduct as a 
member of Congress, which was granted. 

Now for the first time under the constitution the Assembly was 
to hold an inquest into the character of a member of Congress. 
The novelty of the occasion imparted an interest to the scene. 
The Convention of July had performed a similar office in the case 
of Col. Bland ;* but, as that body was single and undivided, the 
mode of procedure was obvious. But the Assembly consisted of 
two houses, both of which must decide in the premises ; and the 
question arose whether the trial should take place before each house 
separately, or before the houses in joint-session. Yet another 
question arose. If the trial were to be conducted in joint-session, 
should the members of the House proceed to the chamber 
of the Senate, or the members of the Senate proceed to the 
chamber of the House. In England the House of Lords had never 
appeared at the bar of the House of Commons ; on the contrary, 
the Commons had always appeared at the bar of the Lords. It 
was soon seen that there was no analogy between the cases. When 
the Commons appeared at the bar of the Lords, it was either to 
hear a speech from the throne or to prosecute an impeachment; 
but on no ordinary occasion had the houses ever been required to 
unite in the a joint-vote. It was plain, that, in the absence of prece- 
dent, the law of convenience should prevail. And, as the number 
of the delegates exceeded the number of the Senators more than 
four times, and as the chamber of the Senate was arranged on too 
small a scale to hold both bodies, it was determined that the trial 
should proceed in the hall of the House of Delegates. 

The day of the trial arrived. The novelty of the procedure, the 
fame of the individual whose reputation was at stake, the deep and 
irrepressible excitement of the public mind which had recently led 
to the sacrifice of so illustrious a victim, and which was now re- 
kindled for a second contest, and the universal desire of observing 

* Journal Convention, of July 1775, page 8. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 139 

the exhibition of that eloquence which had so often been heard 
within those walls, and which, when employed in behalf of others, 
was almost irresistible, filled the hall of the Capitol with a concourse 
of people which had not been seen in this city since the resolution 
of independence had been adopted by the Convention the year pre- 
ceding. Probably at no period of his life did Lee experience more 
painful sensations than he then felt.* Heretofore a brilliant au- 
dience served only to quicken his faculties; but now his associates 
were his judges, and that large audience might be the witnesses of 
his shame. He felt that sense of humiliation, whicli a proud spirit, 
conscious of right, might well feel in appearing before men who had 
already prejudged his case under circumstances most painful to his 
pride as a man of honor, and injurious to his reputation as a states- 
man. With popular bodies he had indeed been long familiar ; but 
popular bodies in exciting times he well knew were rarely con- 
trolled by the mere force of testimony; and by the setting of that 
day's sun he might be pronounced a dishonored man. Nor could 
he refrain from the reflection, perhaps a generous one, that the in- 
terest of that spectacle extended beyond the confines of Virginia, 
and that the eyes of Congress, from which body he had been so un- 
kindly recalled, were eagerly fixed upon it. Before him in the 
chair of the House sat George Wythe, who, though six years older 
than himself, and seemingly advanced in life, had not yet taken his 
seat on the bench of that Court in which he was to preside for the 
third of a century, who had observed his course from his first ap- 
pearance on the public stage, who had heard almost all his great 
speeches at home and abroad, and with whom he had passed so 
many years of mingled hopes and fears. The Senate was soon an- 
nounced, and entered the hall, the venerable Archibald Cary at its 
head. The Speakers of the Houses sat side by side. The mem- 
bers of the Senate sat together. The order of the day was then 
called. Witnesses were examined at length ; and when the testi- 
mony was taken, Lee proceeded to address the assembly. Not a 
sentence of that speech has come down to us, but its effect is well 

* The details of the votes for the five members of Congress who were elected 
when Lee was superseded were well calculated to mortify him. Each member 
was elected separately, and Lee's name was brought forward five times but 
never received more than eleven votes in a house of uear one hundred and thirty 
members, and on one of the ballots it received but two. To add to his mortifi- 
cation, his own brother Francis Lightfoot Lee was brought forward and elected. 
See Journal of the H. of D. for 1777, pages 33, 34, and 35. 



140 RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

remembered. We are told that he spoke with an eloquence so 
touching that every heart was melted by its power, and that every 
eye was in tears. When he concluded, the Senate withdrew, and 
the House immediately voted an acquittal ; and adopted a resolution 
instructing the Speaker to return its thanks to Lee "for the faithful 
services he has rendered his country in the discharge of his duty as 
one of the delegates from this state in the General Congress." On 
the passage of the resolution the Speaker rose and performed his 
office — the tears rolling down his honest face as he spoke. When 
he closed his remarks, Mr. Lee, who rose to receive the address of 
the Speaker, made his acknowledgements to the House in a brief 
and exquisitely graceful but manly speech.* The Senate also passed 
an honorable acquittal. That this affair made a most painful im- 
pression on the mind of Lee may be inferred from the fact stated by 
him in a letter to John Adams written two years afterwards, that 
he looked to Massachusetts as the place " where he yet hoped 
to finish the remainder of his days."t 

Now, strange as it may appear, there is no official record, no 
general history, not even the gazettes of the day, not even the frag- 
ment of a published letter, which throws any light on the nature of 
the charges which blasted for a time the popularity of one of the 
purest patriots of the Revolution. Girardin states that the charges 
have not come down to us. The grandson of Lee, in his pious 
tribute to the memory of his ancestor, mentions, but without giving 
any authority for the fact, what he supposes to have been the 
grounds of the accusation. It w r as therefore with sincere pleasure 
that the person addressing the chair, in the course of an examina- 
tion of the papers of Patrick Henry in the possession of his son at 
Red Hill, found a letter written by Lee to Henry in which he states 
the charges alleged against him, and refutes them at length and 
with perfect success. These charges were mainly that in exacting 
his rents from his tenants, which, much to their advantage when 
the contract was made, were payable in kind — a contract made be- 
fore the Revolution and of course before the issue of paper money 

* The speeches of Wythe and Lee may he found in the Journals of the House 
of Delegates of that year, (113) in Girardin, and in the Life of Lee by hi« 
grandson. The Journal states that Mr. Lee rose in his place when Mr. Wythe 
addressed him. The custom of the British Parliament is that when a member 
is thanked in his place, that place becomes his fixed seat as long as he remains 
a member of the House. I know not whether this usage prevailed in the colony. 

t Life of R. H. Lee Vol. 1. 226. 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 141 

hy the state — he sought to depreciate the public currency ; and that 
he had made in his public capacity in Congress a discrimination in 
favor of the Northern ports against the Southern. These were evi- 
dently pretexts for an opposition based upon other grounds. Nor 
was this opposition exhibited only in excluding Lee from the dele- 
gation to Congress. Under a plausible pretext of rotation in 
office, an act had been passed which declared " that no person who 
shall have served, or shall hereafter serve, as a member of Congress 
for three years successively, including the time he hath heretofore 
served, shall be capable of serving therein again till he shall be out 
of the same one whole year;"* — a measure which lost to the con- 
federation the services of some of our ablest men at a most difficult 
crisis, and which Lee states in the letter alluded to was aimed ex- 
pressly at him. The truth is that the history of Virginia from the 
meeting of the first House of Delegates in the fall of 1776 to the 
close of the war, is yet almost wholly unwritten. Glimpses, faint 
and casual, of the state of parties may be seen in the text of Girar- 
din and in his notes. A record from one cabinet and a rumor 
founded on the supposed contents of another, serve only to sharpen 
the general curiosity, not to satisfy it. Should the state of parties 
during the time specified ever be recorded with any fullness and by 
an impartial hand, it will make up one of the most unexpected and 
most thrilling chapters in our annals. And let me add, that unless 
the effort be made ere long to write that portion of our secret his- 
tory, it will be lost to posterity.! 

* Hening's Statutes at Large, Vol. IX. 299. The same act provides that the 
pay of a member of Congress shall be eight dollars per diem, fifteen pence per 
mile going and returning, together with his ferriages ; and that no member of Con- 
gress shall be eligible to either house of assembly. The Virginia restriction of 
the term of service of a member of Congress was made still more stringent in 
the Articles of Confederation, which provided that no delegate should be eligi- 
ble for more than three years in a period of six. 

| Through all his difficulties Lee retained the unabated confidence and affec- 
tion of Patrick Henry. As illustrations of this fact, and in defence of Lee, I 
annex several extracts from the letters of Henry addressed to Lee : 

" Adieu my dear friend. May your powerful assistance be never wanted 
when the best interests of America are in danger. May the subterfuges of 
Toryism be continually exposed and counteracted by that zeal and ability you 
have so long displayed to the peculiar honor of your native country, and the 
advantage of all the United States. I am your ever affectionate P. Henry, jun." 
The date of the above extract is the time when Lee was most unpopular ; viz : 
"Williamsburg, March 20, 1777. 

" In this suspense (the Legislature had been sitting some time and had done 
nothing) when matters of vast concern are on the tapis, your friends think the 
general interests of America and the welfare of this State call you here. I 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 

An opportunity soon occurred of reinstating Mr. Lee in his for- 
mer position. Col. Masnn, who was one of the five members 
elected when Lee was deposed, having declined to accept the ap- 
pointment, he was elected in his stead, again took his seat in Con- 
gress of which body he became the president, and was re-elected as 
often as he became eligible under the Confederation, until that 
body was superseded by the federal constitution. When not a 
member of Congress, he was usually a member of the House of 
Delegates; and it is honorable to his character to affirm that the 
views which he took of many of the great questions in our revolu- 
tionary councils, such as the expediency of the repeated issues of 
paper money, the payment of the British debts, the payment of 
taxes in kind, and similar topics, are those which the philosophic 
historian with the panorama of the past unfolded before him would 
pronounce to have been the wisest and best. As he was a member 
of Congress while the federal Convention was sitting in Philadel- 

should think so too, did I not know that your whole time and attention have 
been bestowed on the American contest since its first beginnings. Fine parts 
are seldom joined to industry, and very seldom accompany such a degree of 
strength and toughness as your long contest with Tories required. 1 know 
how necessary a little repose is to you. It is cruel to deny it. But I cannot 
help fearing that our country may date the era of calamity at the time when 
you are absent from the public counsels." Williamsburg, Dec. 18, 1777. 

From the letter from which the above extract is taken, I select a paragraph 
which will show not only that some of the members of the Convention opposed 
a declaration of independence, but that they were well known at the time : 

"The Confederation is passed (the Assembly) nem. con. ; though opposed 
by some who opposed independency. This I hear, and I hear other things, though 
I shall forbear to enlarge because I still entertain some hope you will be here 
to see and hear for yourself, and by seeing and hearing, once more emi- 
nently serve the cause of Whiggism and your country. I beg you to be as- 
sured that with great affection I am, my dear friend, yours ever." 

Some months later (April 4, 1778,) Henry addressed to Lee the letter of 
which the following is an extract : 

" You are again traduced by a certain set who have drawn in others, who 
say that you are engaged in a scheme to discard Gen. Washington. I know 
you too well to suppose you would attempt anything not evidently calculated 
to serve the cause of Whiggism. To dismiss the General would not be so ; 
ergo, &c., &c. But it is your fate to surfer the constant attacks of disguised 
Tories who take this measure to lessen you. Farewell, my dear friend. In 
praying for your welfare, I pray for that of my country to which your life and 
service are of the last moment. I am in great haste your affectionate P. Henry." 

And eleven years later, when Lee was a member of the Senate of the United 
States, a most intimate correspondence was carried on through the post. From 
the conclusion of one of the letters of Henry, dated Prince Edward, Aug. 28, 
1789, taken at a venture, it will be seen the same devoted friendship existed 
between them : 

" May you long continue the friend and support of your country's best in- 
terests, and enjoy every good thing, is the sincere wish of, dear sir, your affec- 
tionate friend and servant." 



RICHARD HENRY LEE. 143 

phia, he declined an appointment to that body as the successor of 
Patrick Henry;* nor was he a member of the Convention of Virginia 
which ratified the federal constitution ; but he strenuously opposed 
its adoption without previous amendments, and in a letter addressed 
to the Governor of this state he pointed out what he deemed its de- 
fects, insisting that the state should refuse to adopt the constitution 
until previous amendments were ratified in the mode presented by 
that instrument. This letter made a deep impression not only on 
the people of Virginia but on those of Kentucky and North Caro- 
lina. On the organization of the federal government he was elected 
to the Senate of the United States, and made great and not wholly 
unsuccessful efforts to effect those changes in the constitution 
which he had urged in his published letter, and which were sug- 
gested by the Virginia Convention. He remained in the Senate 
three years, when he resigned his seat, and died two years after, on 
the nineteenth day of June, 1794, at Chantilly, his residence in 
the county of Westmoreland, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. 

Of the men of the Revolution none has come down to us with 
more distinctness than Richard Henry Lee. His tall, spare form, 
his head, in the language of a kindred spirit, "leaning persuasively 
and gracefully forward," his Roman profile which instantly marked 
him out from the lobby or the gallery, his action polished with such 
rare skill that the loss of the fingers of his left hand failed so attract 
the attention of the observer, his flowing eloquence set off by the 
modulated tones of a sweet voice, his classic wit, his devotion to his 
country, and his calm and ardent piety which gilded his pathway 
almost from the cradle to the grave ; these impressions, as they are 
contemplated by us with delight, at the distance of two generations, 
so they will be remembered with grateful admiration for ages yet to 
come.f 

* So stated by Mr. Madison in a letter to Jefferson dated April 23, 1787. 
Madison Papers, 643. 

t Curtis in his History of the Constitution of the United States, (I, 49,) after 
stating that Mr. Lee was the author of the plan adopted by the House of Bur- 
gesses in 1773 for the formation of committees of correspondence, out of which 
grew the plan of the Continental Congress, observes : " In the second Congress 
he was selected to move the resolution of independence." If the meaning of this 
be that Lee was selected directly or indirectly by the body to offer that resolu- 
tion, I am inclined to believe that Mr. Curtis is mistaken. The Virginia dele- 
gation was peremptorily instructed to propose independence by the present 
Convention, and the duty of presenting the resolution naturally devolved upon 
Lee as the senior member, and one who was the best speaker among them. Mr. 



144 PATRICK HENRY. 

In close connection with the name of Richard Henry Lee has 
been associated for nearly a centuiy past, and will be in future time, 
the name of a statesman, who, though sprung from a stock unknown 
and unhonored in the colony, and destitute of that wealth which 
even in colonial society not unfrequently supplied the place of 
birth, was his successful rival in the House of Burgesses, in the 
State Conventions, on the floor of Congress, and subsequently in 

Curtis overlooks the important fact that the resolution is almost in the very 
words of the resolution adopted by the Virginia Convention. 

In John Adam's Autobiography, speaking of the reasons which induced Con- 
gress to select so young a man as Mr. Jetferson to draw the declaration, he 
says: "Another reason was that Mr. Richard Henry Lee was not beloved by 
most of his colleagues from Virginia, and Mr. Jeli'erson was set up to rival and 
supplant him." Whether Lee was or was not popular with his colleagues, the 
recollection of the venerable patriarch of Quincy must stand for what it is worth ; 
but that any unworthy feeling of rivalry between Jeli'erson and Lee operated in 
the choice of the former as the head of the Declaration Committee is disproved 
by the facts of the case. When the ballot for the committee took place, Mr. Lee 
had departed for Virginia on an indefinite absence; and it is well known that the 
declaration committee was appointed for the sake of despatch before the resolution 
of independence was adopted by Congress. The probability is that Jeil'erson 
owed his appointment partly to the fact that the resolution of independence was 
a Virginia measure ; and partly to his reputation as a ready and graceful w : riter. 
The obvious truth is that Mr. Adams' "Frankfort" Platform (Works II, 512) 
is wholly illusory. 

Curtis in his History of the Constitution of the United States (Vol. I, 116) 
has the following sentence : " The suppression of the royal authority through- 
out the colonies, by virtue of the resolve of the Continental Congress passed on the 
Wth of May, 1776, rendered necessary the formation of local governments, ca- 
pable at once of answering the ends of political society, and of continuing 
without interruption the protection of law over property, life, and public order." 
How " the royal authority" may be said to have been "suppressed" by the pas- 
sage of the resolution of the 10th of May does not seem clear to my mind. The 
resolution of the 10th of May was but a re-enactment of the resolution of Congress 
passed at the close of the previous year, which advised the colonies to form such 
a plan of government "as would most elfectually secure good order in the 
province during the continuance of the present dispute between Great Britain and 
the Colotiies." The resolution of the 10th of May had no reference to the " sup- 
pression" of "royal authority" at all. Its plain and palpable object was to 
bring about such a state of things in the several colonies as to enable them to 
act with efficiency during the pending troubles. The Congress itself was far 
from being prepared to " suppress the royal authority" as early as the 10th of 
May. The debate on the resolution of independence shows that there was 
much reluctance among the members to declare independence. The fact is 
that Congress instead of giving the impulse to independence received it from 
the colonies. Before the resolution of the 10th of May could have reached 
Williamsburg, Virginia had met in her Convention, discussed the subject of 
independence, and instructed her delegates to piopose it in Congress; and had 
appointed a committee to draft a declaration of rights and a plan of government 
for a free state. North Carolina had also " empowered" her delegates to vote for 
independence a month before the passage of the resolution of the 10th of May. 
This view of Curtis is mainly important as foreshadowing the theory of consol- 
idation which may be broached in the second volume of his work which has not 
yet appeared. 



PATRICK HENRY. 145 

the House of Delegates, who was nearly his equal in age,* who 
lived with him in the bonds of affectionate friendship, who acted in 
unison with him on all the great public questions of the third of a 
century, and who closed a life equally devoted to his country, and 
equally resplendent with genius and patriotism about the same pe- 
riod. It has been usual to represent Patrick Henry as an idle, va- 
grant boy, hating his book, sauntering in the woods, lolling on the 
bank of a stream with a fishing rod in his hand, and fond of the 
sports of the field. That he loved retirement and delighted in the 
active exercises of youth is doubtless true ; but he errs greatly who 
supposes that the youth of such a man was wholly spent in idleness 
and folly. His father was a Scotchman and a teacher, and was so 
well versed in the Latin classics, that no less a judge than Samuel 
Davies pronounced him, Scotchman as he was, more intimately con- 
versant with his Horace than with his Bible. As it is well-known 
that the Scotch teach their children Latin at an early age, it is pro- 
bable that Henry was in his early youth skilled in the rudiments of 
that tongue. t He also studied mathematics of which he was fond. 
His quick apprehension placed him ahead of his fellows, and he 
could easily afford to spend in sport the time which others were 
compelled to devote in reaching a point to which he had already at- 
tained. At no time of his life, indeed, was he a reader of many 
books, but at no time of his life was he without some great work in 
history or morals which he read with unremitting care. The books 
which he read were those which were well designed to brace his 
mind, and to furnish it with knowledge adapted to the sphere in 
which he was destined to move. British history, his favorite Livy 
which he read again and again, Soame Jenyns, and Bishop Butler, 
whose Analogy was his standard book through life, constituted the 
food on which he fed. He remembered the remark of Hobbes, 
that, if he had read as many books, he would have been as stupid 
as other people. His speech in the parsons' cause showed that at 
that early period of his life he had been accustomed to arrange his 
thoughts with care and had studied the art of speaking with the 
strictest attention. What the lonely cave and the sounding surf 
were to Demosthenes were the rustling woods and the prattling 

* Lee was four years older than Henry and died in 1794 ; Henry died in 1799. 

t John Adams, in his Diary (Works vol. II, 396,) of the Congress of 1774, 
says that Henry told them that at fifteen he had read Virgil and Livy, but had 
not read a Latin book since. 

10 



146 PATRICK IIENRY. 

streams to his modern rival. He belonged to a class of speakers 
now passing away, of whom Samuel Davies was an early and 
Archibald Alexander a later type, who had learned to arrange their 
thoughts in the strictest logical sequence without putting pen to 
paper, and who in the glow of public discussion infinitely tran- 
scended not only in fervor of fancy but in force of logic their private 
meditations. If any evidence were required to show his critical 
study of the English tongue, it will be found in his letters which 
are far more elegant than those of Pendleton and Wythe, and fully 
equal those of Lee. His farewell letter to the officers of the army, 
and his letter to the Convention accepting the office of Governor, 
written on the spur of the moment, are faultless models of what 
such letters ought to be. That the stern necessities of life, the labor 
of providing bread for a family the cares of which he assumed in 
his eighteenth year, prevented him from attaining that excellence of 
which he was capable, is certain ; but in the greatest debates with 
his most able opponents he Was never at a loss for arguments drawn 
from ancient and modern history to sustain his cause. Hence 
too, that power which made him most formidable in reply; for he 
was enabled to see the historical facts pressed by his adversaries not 
merely in the light in which they were presented in debate, but 
in their connections with the facts which preceded and the facts 
which followed them. He was not a great lawyer in the technical 
•sense of the word, nor would be ever have become one. His first 
step was a false one, and could not be retraced. He had not served 
an apprenticeship to the law; with her forms he was unfamiliar; he 
had taken up the profession late as the last resource for the suste- 
nance of his family; and with this view he pursued it, distasteful as 
it was ; resolved, as soon as he was able to live without it, to cast it 
aside. When, in the decline of life and in the midst of affluence, he 
engaged in the British debt cause, the industry and care with which 
he made his preparations prove what w r ould have been his course 
had he embraced the law in early life, and had devoted to it his un- 
divided attention. As a criminal lawyer he was confessedly at the 
head of his profession. He was not only not approached, but he 
was unapproachable. Even in civil cases, when the question was 
loosed from the fetters of special pleading, and involved a principle 
of common right or a principle founded on the law of nature and na- 
tions, of all the learned men at the bar of the General Court, none 



PATRICK HENRY. 147 

could stand before him. That Robert Carter Nicholas on retiring 
from the bar committed his business to Henry, shows that so stern 
a judge of merit thought him not unequal to the duty assigned him. 
But, however luxuriant and enduring are the laurels which 
he won in the disputations of the forum, he might have trodden 
them in the dust, and yet preserved a reputation which his 
proudest compeers might have sought in vain to rival. He was the 
Seer of the Revolution. He was the patriot-prophet of an era in the 
history of our race, if second to one great religious epoch, second to 
no political one, and in comparison with which the Revolution which 
placed William of Orange on the throne of Great Britain sinks into in- 
significance. The British Revolution was but the exchange of one 
king who refused to obey the laws of the realm for another king who 
consented to obey them. It was the exchange of one hereditary 
dynasty for another hereditary dynasty to be removed, if ever, by 
another Revolution. But the American Revolution was to teach 
a far more imposing lesson than any that could be drawn from 
a mere change of rulers. It taught, and will teach forever, that 
the people are the only legitimate source of power, that all govern- 
ment is a trust to be executed for the benefit of those who create 
it, that personal worth, and not the worth or want of worth of 
ancestors, is the true test of merit and the rule of honor, that all 
the children of the same parents are entitled to equal favor in 
the eye of the law, that the soil beneath our feet belongs to the 
living, not to the dead, and that man may worship God without the 
fear of man according to the dictates of his conscience. Nor are 
its facts less eloquent than its doctrines. A few sparse colonies on 
the eastern coast of the North American continent, mainly peopled 
by the Anglo-Saxon race, and dependent on the guardian care of 
a country that despised them, resolved to resist the tyranny that 
oppressed them, achieved their independence with the sword in a 
contest with one of the most powerful nations known in ancient 
or in modern times, established free systems of government, opened 
their ports to the active, the enterprising, and the oppressed of 
every clime, increased their population in a ratio unknown in the 
calculations of Europe, enlarged their territory to such an extent 
that it already reaches from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico 
and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, to judge the future by 
the stern statistics of the. past, if we measure a period of time ex- 



148 PATRICK IIEITRY. 

tending from the passage of the resolutions against the stamp act to 
the present, and from the present to a point of time nearly 
equally distant in the future — a period the expiration of which 
the children of persons now living may behold- — will possess a 
civilized population greater than was ever before gathered under 
a single government under the sun, and approaching the enormous- 
number of three hundred millions of human beings! Such is the 
American Revolution, and of such an epoch Patrick Henry was 
the master spirit. 

It is proper, however, to observe that even reflecting men are 
sometimes prone to draw unjust inferences from the respective 
parts borne by Henry and by his compeers in the preliminary 
stages of the revolutionary troubles. There is one point of view 
from which the course of both ought to be regarded, and it is the 
only point of view from which the consistency of both is fully ap- 
parent. Alone among all the statesmen of his time, Henry was, 
from the beginning of the contest, at heart in favor of indepen- 
dence. All his measures took a form in obedience to his main de- 
sign, and, considered in this light, appear in perfect harmony. On 
the other hand, all his contemporaries without exception not only 
did not desire independence but eagerly sought an honorable recon- 
ciliation with the mother country. Mason, Peyton Randolph, Pen- 
dleton, Wythe, Bland, Nicholas, Jefferson, and others, were as late 
as 1775 in favor of a connection with Great Britain.* The Con- 
vention of July 1775 closed its sessions with an elaborate address 
to the people in which they "solemnly declare, before God and 
the world, that we do bear faith and true allegiance to his majesty 
George the Third, our true and lawful king." Hence the zeal with 
which Henry in the House of Burgesses pressed his resolutions 
against the stamp act, and in the March Convention of 1775 his 
resolutions for embodying the militia ; and hence the zeal with 
which his compatriots opposed them. Both sets of resolutions, 
regarded as a means of forcing independence, were wise and pro- 
per ; but, regarded as measures of policy proceeding from public 
bodies which had already adopted a series of measures deemed 
by them likely to attain the end in view, and which had not yet 

* Journal Va. Convention July 177.5, page 28; Mason to Mercer, Hist. Reg- 
ister Vol. II, 28 ; Jefferson to John Randolph, Works Vol. I ; Pendleton's Au- 
tobiographical Sketch, &c, &tc. 



PATRICK HENRY. 149 

spent their force, were manifestly ill-timed and inconsistent. If 
the opinions of Henry had been embraced generally as early as 
1765, the result would undoubtedly have been beneficial. The 
fatal policy of commercial non-intercourse with Great Britain would 
have been rejected, and the country in the beginning of hostilities, 
instead of being utterly destitute of all the munitions of war, 
would have been well supplied with the means of prosecuting 
the contest with becoming energy. Thus, judging from the re- 
sult, while we admire the far-sightedness of Henry which led 
him to take at once the stand which his compatriots after ten 
years of humiliation were compelled to assume, we must be care- 
ful not to impugn the patriotism of those, who, starting from a 
different point, and having a different object in view, prosecuted 
their course with eminent wisdom and ability, until by the declara- 
tion of independence a common design and a common object 
brought all parties together. 

The story of the life of Henry is so well known by the generous 
tribute which the genius of Wirt has paid to his memory, that we 
will hasten through our part. Our present purpose is simply to in- 
troduce him as he was up to this period, when, in his fortieth year, 
he took his seat in the Convention. His success in the House of 
Burgesses in 1765 in passing his resolutions against the stamp act 
was one of the most brilliant and decisive triumphs in parliamen- 
tary history. The resolutions themselves, written hastily as they 
were, are sketched with masterly ability, and show the point and 
grace with which he wielded his pen. The questions involve^ 
in them were beyond and above the common law, and were dis 
cussed by him with a force of argument and with a warmth of 
eloquence which solid planters and grave statesmen could not 
resist. The oldest and most learned lawyers of the colony quailed 
before a raw youth of nine and twenty, who had never be- 
fore opened his lips in a deliberative assembly. Indeed all the 
external aids which impart dignity and authority to a public 
speaker on a great occasion were wanting to him. He was 
personally unknown to most of his audience. He was dressed 
in such a garb as no delegate from the Salt Lake, no delegate 
from the distant realm through which the Oregon rolls his tu- 
multuous floods to the sea, would now wear in a public meeting; 
and he spoke to an assembly composed of men, some of whom 



150 PATRICK HENRY. 

had been educated to the law in the Temple, others of whom were 
the cool and skillful debaters of an age when caste and birth and 
dress were more regarded than they are now or will be again. 
That his resolutions should have passed not only without the con- 
sent of such men, but in spite of their long, keen, and fierce op- 
position waged in a body in which they had previously for years 
exerted an unlimited sway, as it was the marvel of the past age, 
so it is the marvel now, and so it will be the marvel in time to 
come. On the afternoon of the day on which he offered his reso- 
lutions, he might have been seen passing along that street on his 
way to his home in Louisa, clad in a pair of leather breeches, his 
saddle-bags on his arm, leading a lean horse, and chatting with Paul 
Carrington who walked by his side.* 

His speech ten years later in the Convention of March 1775 on 
his resolutions for organizing the militia was the second great 
triumph which he achieved in the public councils. Some portions 
of his speech in their defence, preserved in the memory of those 
who heard it, are still extant, and exhibit a force of argument and 
a beauty of expression so finely blended, that, after a lapse of 
eighty years, they still form the delight of the young and the ad- 
miration of the old.t 

Nor was the influence of Henry, as has been too generally be- 
lieved, confined to public debate. He was as effective in the com- 
mittee-room as on the floor of the house. In both spheres his 
honesty and intrepidity were the sources of his success. Every 
body saw that he was sincere, and that he did not belong to a class 
not uncommon in revolutions, who are disposed to cling to the pow- 
ers that be with one hand, and to the people with the other. There 
was something fascinating in the boldness with which he planted 
himself on the extreme frontier of the public rights, and with which 
he hurled defiance at the parliament and at the throne. Yet such 
was his wisdom and ability in council, that so competent a judge 
as George Mason, who in passing through this city in the spring 
of 1774- was invited to the consultation of the leading patriots, de- 
clared in a letter written at the time and recently brought to light, 

* Carrington Memoranda. Paul Carrington distinctly remembered seeing 
Mr. Jeti'erson among the spectators in the debate on Henry's resolutions. 

t Although it may well be doubted that much of the speech published by 
Wirt is apochryphal, some of its expressions and the outline of the argument 
are believed to be authentic. 



PATRICK HENRY. 151 

that "he was not only the most eloquent speaker he ever heard, 
but that his eloquence is the smallest part of his merit. He is in 
my opinion the first man on this continent as well in ability as in 
public virtues, and had he lived in Rome about the time of the first 
Punic war, when the Roman people had arrived at their meridian 
glory, and their virtues not tarnished, Mr. Henry's talents must 
have put him at the head of that glorious commonwealth."* If 
every other record of the worth of Henry were obliterated, this 
letter of George Mason would stamp immortality upon his name. 

When Henry took his seat in the Convention as a delegate from 
Hanover, he may be said to have appeared under a cloud. He 
had recently thrown up his commission as colonel of the first regi- 
ment, and, as such, commander of the forces of the colony, and he 
was in the midst of men who had inflicted what some were in- 
clined to deem an indignity upon him. Pendleton was in the chair, 
and in different parts of the house were Mason, Carrington, Digges, 
Mercer, Tabb, Jones, Bland, Ludwell Lee, and Cabell of Union 
Hill. Thomas Walker alone of the Committee of Safety was ab- 
sent. Of the state of affairs which impelled him to resign his 
post I have already spoken at length ;t and it may be doubted 
whether he possessed those qualities which make a wary par- 
tizan, and which are so often possessed in an eminent degree by 
uneducated men. Regular fighting there was none in the colony, 
until near the close of the war. But, if Henry did not possess 
those qualities, it was because he possessed others of a higher kind 
with which they were in some degree incompatible. The most 
skillful partizan in the Virginia of that day, covered as it was 
with forests, cut up by streams and beset by predatory bands, 
would have been the Indian warrior, and, as a soldier approached 
that model, would he have possessed the proper tactics for the time. 
That Henry would not have made a better Indian fighter than 
Jay, or Livingston, or the Adamses, that he might not have made 
as dashing a partizan as Tarleton or Simcoe, his friends might read- 
ily afford to concede ; but that he evinced, what neither Jay, nor 
Livingston, nor the Adamses did evince, a determined resolution to 
stake his reputation and his life on the issue of arms, and that he 
resigned his commission when the post of imminent danger was 

* Letter of Mason to Coclcburn, Va. Hist. Register, Vol. Ill, 27. 
t Under the head of Pendleton. 



152 PATRICK HENRY. 

refused hiin, exhibit lucid proof that, whatever may have been his 
ultimate fortune, he was not deficient in two great elements of mili- 
tary success ; personal enterprize and unquestioned courage. 

The face of Henry is known from the portrait by Sully, and 
Sully's portrait, though copied from a miniature corrected by the 
recollections of friends, is thought a fair likeness ; yet it is proper 
to say that I have often heard from one of his contemporaries who 
knew every feature of that magical face, and who had seen the 
likeness of Sully, that there was a more striking resemblance be- 
tween the face of Henry and the face of Capt. Cook the navigator 
than between the face of Henry and that of the portrait by Sully.* 
He was always plain in his dress, and disliked changes in the fash- 
ions. " Here," said he to a friend, holding up his arm and dis- 
playing the sleeve of a coat the worse for wear, "here is a coat 
good enough for me ; yet I must get a new one to please the eyes 
of other people." His tastes were simple. He loved the old 
dishes which he had seen served from infancy on his father's plain 
board, and was not indisposed to associate a love of the standard 
dishes of the country with a love of the country itself. When he 
heard that Mr. Jefferson, recently returned from France, had in- 
troduced a number of French dishes into his cuisine, he talked 
harshly about a man's "abjuring his native victuals." In later 
life as in his younger days, he was always accessible by those who 
sought him. He was wont to tell with great zest an incident that 
happened in the yard of Prince Edward Court House just before 
leaving the county to take his seat in the federal Convention in 
Richmond. An old fox-hunter gave him a sharp tap on the shoul- 
der, and said to him: "Old fellow, stick to the people; if you 
take the back track, we are gone." 

If Henry at the beginning of the session of the Convention was 
under a cloud, he was to appear before its close in his true light as 
the herald of the Revolution. On the twenty-ninth of June that 
body adopted the constitution and immediately proceeded in pursu- 
ance of its provisions to elect a governor. On counting the ballots 
t was found that Henry had received a large majority, and he 

* Such was the opinion of Col. C. Carrington and, I am told, of Judge Mar- 
shall. It may be well enough to say that the portrait of Sully is at Red Hill, 
and that a fine copy of it has been presented to the Va. Historical Society by 
the distinguished artist and now graces its hall in Richmond. 



PATRICK HENRY. 153 

was declared duly elected. * By a resolution of the body the palace 
was assigned as his residence, and he was soon installed in the 
building which Dunmore had deserted, which had long been the 
abode of the vice-gerents of kings, but which now gained a greater 
glory than it had yet known as the residence of the first Governor 
of the Commonwealth of Virginia — and that Governor the master- 
spirit who in the senate was the first to assail the supremacy of the 
British king, and to incur the bitter hatred of his adherents ; who 
was the first to draw his sword in defence of the rights of his coun- 
try and to equip her armies for the field, as he was the first to com- 
mand them ; and who was among the first to propose independence 
and to form that system of government of which he was the first 
Chief Magistrate.! 

In all great movements of the public mind in governments 
whether free or despotic, it rarely happens that the chief glory 
belongs to a single individval. It would seem, as if, by a special 
design of Providence, to repress the promptings of ambition, that 
particular provinces of dut} r are assigned to particular persons, who 
reap indeed individual honor and reputation by a display of their 
genius and worth, but whose blended glories, instead of encircling 
a single head, are made to constitute the moral capital of the new 
system. Such was the case in the Revolution. Indisputable as 
was the pre-eminence of Washington in the field, even in the field he 
had co-adjutors worthy of the cause in which he was engaged ; and 
there were duties to be performed quite as urgent as those com- 
mitted to him, which were wholly beyond his reach, and from 
which his modesty would instantly have shrunk. To confine our 
views to Virginia : It would seem difficult to have assigned any 
two other persons to the spheres which before and during the Rev- 
olution were so ably filled by Pendleton and Wythe ; yet there 
were spheres beyond the ability of Pendleton and Wythe as well 
as of Washington, which it was indispensable to the success of 

* The vote was for Henry 60, Thomas Nelson 45, John Page 1. 

f 1 have alluded to the friendship which existed between Henry and R. H. 
Lee. In spite of a wide diiference of opinion on measures of local legislation, 
each advocating his own views with great earnestness in debate, they were 
warm personal friends. Lee, while a member of the Senate of the United 
States, closes a letter to Henry witli these words : " I am with the most cordial 
regard and esteem, dear sir, your most affectionate friend and servant." Henry's 
salutations were equally cordial and affectionate. See the letters of Lee and 
Henry at Red Hill. 



154 GEORGE MASON. 

the common cause to be adequately filled. Hence, as by a divine 
impulse, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry appeared on the 
stage. Such was the dignity of the parts which they played in 
that superb drama, that the historian, who should write an account 
of the Revolution and slight their names, would as little deserve our 
respect as the historian, who, in describing the English Common- 
wealth, should overlook the names of Hampden and Pym, or who, 
in reviewing the literature of the age of Elizabeth or the age of 
Cromwell, should omit the name of the author of Macbeth, or of the 
author of Paradise Lost. Yet there were other parts to be per- 
formed of equal if not greater importance than theirs, which neither 
Pendleton, nor Wythe, nor Washington, nor Lee, nor Henry could 
have performed as well, but which were performed with such skill 
and wisdom as to overawe us at this distance of time, and which 
fills us with a spirit of thankfulness to the Ruler of Nations when 
we contemplate the characters and pronounce the names of George 
Masojv and Thomas Jefferson. 

Both were members of the Convention now sitting. Mason, who 
was seventeen years older than his compeer, had attained his fif- 
tieth year, and though his once raven locks were touched with 
grey, and he had just recovered from a smart shock of an hereditary 
disease,* appeared in the vigor of manhood. He was nearly six 
feet high, of a large and sinewy frame, and an active step and gait. 
The love of his gun and of the sports of the field kept his limbs in 
fine play. He was one of the most systematic, most extensive, and 
most successful planters in the colony, shipping to England from 
his barn-yard wharf at Gunston, his splendid seat on the Potomac, 
his crops of tobacco, and receiving thence her manufactures in re- 
turn. Exposure had deepened the tints of a light brown complexion ; 
and it was impossible to behold his athletic form and his grave face 
lighted up by a black eye which burned with the brightness of youth, 
without a feeling of respect approaching to awe. His bearing was in 
the highest degree courteous but lofty, and he seemed at first sight to 
belong to that class of which Washington and Andrew Lewis were 
members — men of such high and noble qualities and of such august 
presence as rather to command the admiration of the beholder than 

* See his letter to R. H. Lee, dated May 18, 1776, in the archives of the Va. 
Historical Society, wherein he says that he has just recovered from a fit of the 
gout. 



GEOKGE MASON. 155 

to quicken the gentler feelings of affection and love. Yet no man 
was more sensible of the warmest emotions of friendship, as I have 
heard from those who knew him, and as his letters to his contem- 
poraries strikingly show. His portrait, which long adorned the 
hospitable mansion of Analosta, may still be seen at Clermont.* As 
you look upon it, you perceive that his dark eyes have that pecu- 
liar expression, half sad, half severe, which is seen in the eyes of 
the painter Giotto, the shepherd boy, whom Cimabue found in the 
recesses of the Alps tending sheep, and who, when, like Mason, 
he was summoned from his forest home, like Mason, made an era 
in the history of his art. 

In Mason those titles to the public confidence, which were sev- 
erally held by others, were united in a remarkable manner. He 
was, as before observed, a large and prosperous planter, possessed 
of great wealth hereditary and acquired. He had never been a 
member of the House of Burgesses, and was free from the entan- 
glements, political and personal, of party and passion in which some 
of the leading patriots for the past ten years had been deeply involved. 
He had never sought office, and would have declined a seat in the 
Council, the brilliant prize of colonial ambition, had it been offered 
him. Not a lawyer by profession, he was yet thoroughly skilled 
not only in general history, but especially in the political history of 
England. He had been educated in the colony, probably at this 
college, and, like Washington, had never been abroad; but from an 
early period of life devoting his leisure to study, he had become so 
deeply versed in the knowledge of our early charters and in the 
lore of the British constitution, that, in the midst of men whose 
lives had been devoted to law, his opinions on a great political 
question had almost a conclusive authority. As if no means of 
usefulness should be wanting to this extraordinary man, he was as 
much distinguished by his ability in debate as by his wisdom in 
council. Nor do his eminent abilities in discussion rest on tradi- 
tion. His merits as a speaker are avouched by Mr. Jefferson in the 
strongest terms, and an equally competent judge, who had often 
beheld his forensic exhibitions, and who had encountered him in 
the greatest parliamentary discussion of that age, the cool and 
critical Madison, pronounced him the ablest man in debate whom 

* A copy from an original which was destroyed by fire. Clermont is the 
seat of the widow of Gen. John Mason. 



156 GEORGE MASON. 

he had ever seen. * There was another title to consideration, 
which, trifling as it may seem in our eyes, exerted no contemptible 
influence on the aristocratic society of the colony. On the score 
of birth his position was of the highest. His'ancestor, whose name 
he bore, was a member of parliament in the reign of Charles the 
First, and though, like Hyde and Falkland, intent on effecting im- 
portant amendments in the existing system, did not seek an over- 
throw of the monarchy, and, like Hyde and Falkland, on the ap- 
peal to arms adhered to the king. He organized a military corps, 
and in several engagements had crossed swords with the troopers of 
Cromwell, and had emptied his holsters at his warlike saints. From 
1651, when George Mason, the eldest, flying from the field of 
Worcester, arrived in Hampton Roads, to the period of the Revo- 
lution, the Masons had exerted either in the House of Burgesses 
or at home great influence in the colony. t 

* Mr, Jefferson's personal Memoir in the first volume of his works, and the 
letter of St. George Tucker to Wirt in Kennedy's Life of Wirt, heretofore quoted. 

f As stated in the text, George Mason, the eldest, reached the Colony of Vir- 
ginia and landed in Norfolk county in 1651, and was soon after followed by his 
family. He immediately removed to Acohick creek on the Potomac near 
Pasbitaney, and settled a plantation there, on which he resided during his life, 
and is there buried. In 1676, the year of Bacon's Rebellion, he commanded a 
volunteer force against the Indians, and represented the same year the county 
of Stafford in the House of Burgesses. Stafford had been carved out of West- 
moreland the year before, and was so named by Col. Mason in honor of his na- 
tive county of Staffordshire in England. His eldest son, also called George 
Mason, married Mary, daughter of Girard Fovvke esq. of Gunston Hall in Staf- 
fordshire, England. The eldest son of this marriage also bore the name of 
George Mason, the third of the name, and with his father lived and was buried 
on the patrimonial estate of Acohick. Their wills are of record in Stafford 
County Court in 1710 and 1715 respectively. George Mason, the fourth in de- 
scent, eldest son of George last named, married a daughter of Stevens Thomson 
of Middle Temple, Attorney General of the colony of Virginia in the reign of 
Queen Anne. He established a plantation at Doeg Neck on the Potomac on 
land which he inherited, then in Stafford, now in Fairfax county, and was the 
" Lieutenant and chief Commander" of the county of Stafford in 1719. He was 
drowned by the accidental upsetting of his sail-boat in the Potomac, and his 
body having been recovered was committed to the grave at Doeg's Neck. He 
left three children, two sons and a daughter. Of these sons one was the George 
Mason of the Virginia Convention, and the other was Thomson Mason, hardly 
less celebrated than his brother, who settled in Loudoun, was frequently a mem- 
ber of the House of Burgesses, an eminent member of the bar, and a warm 
friend of his country. Thompson Mason was a martyr to the gout, and it is one 
of the earliest recollections of Gov. Tazewell to have seen him borne into court 
while suffering from that disease. His son Stevens Thomson Mason was a 
member of the Virginia Federal Convention, and was a senator of the United 
States, and had a son, Armistead Thomson Mason, who was also a senator of 
the United States from Virginia. 

The George Mason of the text, the fifth of the name, was born at the planta- 
tion of Doeg's Neck, which he inherited, in 1726, married Ann Eilbeck of Charles 
county, Maryland, and built a new mansion on the high banks of the Potomac 



GEORGE MASON. 157 

Nor were these his only recommendations to the public regard. 
From the dawn of the contest with the mother country, though 
deeply attached to the Hanover family, and averse from indepen- 
dence, he planted himself firmly and fearlessly on the extreme 
limit of colonial right, and proclaimed his determination to main- 
tain his ground at every hazard. When the merchants of London 
addressed a public letter to the planters of Virginia on the repeal 
of the stamp act, Mason gave it a calm and deliberate answer, de- 
fending the position maintained by the colonists in a masterly man- 
ner, and concluding with these monitory words : "These are the 
sentiments of a man who spends most of his time in retirement, and 
has seldom meddled in public affairs ; who enjoys a moderate but 
independent fortune, and content with the blessings of a private 
station, equally disregards the smiles and the frowns of the great."* 

When the right was subsequently asserted by Parliament to tax 
the colonies "in all cases whatsoever," Mason wrote a tract with 
the modest title of " Extracts from the Virginia Charters with some 
remarks upon them," which was ragarded as an unanswerable 
exposition of colonial rights under the charters, and which proved 
a rich mine of authority in the controversy then waging between 
the king and the colonies. What gave additional force to the pro- 
ductions of Mason's pen was the modest and conservative character 
which he uniformly maintained. He cherished no love of change. 
He openly expressed just before the appeal to arms his attachment 
to the House of Brunswick, and insisted on the importance of a co- 
near the river, which he called Gunston Hall, in honor of the seat of his mater- 
nal ancestry in England. Here he lived, and here on the 7th of October, 1792, 
in the 66th year of his age, he died, and was buried. A plain marble slab marks 
his grave, and has engraved upon it his name and the date of his birth and 
death. The estate of Doeg's Neck, afterwards Gunston Hall, consisted of seven 
thousand acres, and lies on the Potomac next below Mount Vernon, Tins ven- 
erable patriot left five sons and four daughters. Of the sons, George, the eldest, 
was a captain in the Virginia line of the Revolution, and inherited Gunston 
Hall, where he lived and was buried, leaving descendants. The fourth son was 
the late Gen. John Mason of Analosta Island, who survived all his brothers, and 
died at his estate at Clermont in Fairfax County in March 1S49 in the S:3rd year 
of his age. The Hon. James Murray Mason, one of the present senators of 
Virginia in Congress, is a son of Gen. John Mason, and is the third of the name 
and race that has filled a seat in the Senate of the United States. All the sons 
of George Mason left descendants. It has occurred to me that the account of 
Bacon's Rebellion by T. M. was written by George Mason the eldest, the T. 
being a misprint for G., or used designedly, as may have been other things in 
that account. 

* This answer was published under the signature of a Virginia Planter in 
the London Public Ledger of 1766. 



158 GEORGE MASON. 

lonial connexion with Great Britain. Writing to a friend in England 
in 1770, when he had recited in the strongest terms the injuries 
which England had inflicted on the colonics, and had indignantly 
denied the imputed design of ambitious men to separate from the 
parent country, he added: "There are not five men of sense who 
would accept of independence, if it were offered. We know our cir- 
cumstances too well; we know that our happiness, our very being, 
depends upon our connexion with the mother country. But we will 
not submit to have our money taken out of our pockets without our 
consent; because if any man, or any set of men, take from us 
without our consent or that of our representatives, one shilling in 
the pound, we have no security for the remaining nineteen." 
When we reflect on the Indian wars from 1756 to the beginning of 
the Revolution, and their cost in blood and treasure to the colony, 
and recall the disastrous defeat of two gallant armies of Washington 
against the western Indians; and when we also recall the cherished 
design of France and Spain to encroach on our frontier, and the 
defenceless condition of the colonial export and import trade, we 
may easily imagine how important in the eyes of a reflecting colo- 
nist would be an honorable connexion with the greatest military 
and maritime nation of the globe. And here the lesson should not 
be overlooked, and which the present generation may wisely heed, 
how readily a mighty empire bound together by the nearest and 
dearest ties of blood, of affection, of a common language, and of 
a common faith, and of all the precious recollections which more 
than ten centuries had clustered about the British name, may be 
rent asunder by passion and pride seeking a contest, which, if suc- 
cessful, could bring no laurels unmoistened in fraternal blood, but 
which, if lost, would entail never-ending hate between ancient 
friends and a perpetual separation. 

The measures adopted from time to time by the House of Bur- 
gesses in the early stages of the colonial troubles received a firm 
and cordial support from Mason. It was at a meeting of the peo- 
ple of Fairfax on the eighteenth of July, 1774, that he may be said 
to have made his first great movement on the theatre of the Rev- 
olution.* The affairs of the northern colonies were approaching a 

* Although this was the first public appearance of Mason, he had been active 
in conversation and with his pen at a much earlier period. The articles of As- 
sociation adopted at the Raleigh after the dissolution of the House of Burgesses 



GEORGE MASON. 159 

crisis, and our own horizon wore a threatening aspect. Washing- 
ton took the chair, and Mason presented a series of resolutions which 
must always hold a conspicuous place among the records of the 
times. They were twenty-four in number, and not only embraced 
a statement of the case in hand, but presented the means and 
measure of redress. They reviewed the whole ground of contro- 
vers} 1 -, recommended a Congress of the colonies, and urged the pol- 
icy of non-intercourse with the mother country. These resolutions 
were transmitted to the first Virginia Convention which held its 
session in this city in the following August, and were sanctioned by 
that body; and substantially adopted by the first General Congress on 
the twentieth of the following October.* The policy of these resolu- 
tions was wisely adjusted to the existing public sentiment, and united 
all parties on a common ground of resistance. They were derided 
and thorough, and were calculated to enlist the commercial interests 
of Great Britain on the side of the colonies ; but they pointed to 
reconciliation, not to Revolution. Had the colonists aimed at inde- 
pendence, the sagacity of Mason would have devised other meas- 
ures more plausible and effectual for such a purpose. A prudent 
British ministry might yet have honorably interposed with success, 
and saved the integrity of the British empire. 

Such was the modesty of this eminent patriot, and such his love 
of domestic life, that it was with difficulty he was persuaded to en- 

in 1769 wore from his pen. As he was not a member of the House and was 
not present in the city of Williamsburg when the articles were adopted, on the 
spur of the moment, I doubted his claim to their authorship ; but it is now cer- 
tain that the articles were brought to the city by Washington who is said to 
have offered them to the meeting. There were some slight additions, which 
may be seen in Writings of Washington Vol. II, 356, note. The articles them- 
selves may be seen in Burk, Vol. Ill, 345, note, and are signed by the following 
gentlemen, who were also members of the present Convention : 

Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Archibald Gary, Richard H. Lee, P. 
Henry, Henry Lee, N. Terry, Thomas Whiting, T. Jetferson, T. Nelson jr., 
Champion Travis, John Blair jr., James Scott, Wilson Miles Gary, Willis Rid- 
dick, John Woodson, Abraham Hite, Francis Peyton, James Wood, Edwin 
Gray, David Mason, Paul Carrington, William Cabell, Henry Taylor, Robert 
Rutherford, Charles Lynch, Win. Clayton, Lewis Burwell, Thomas Johnson, 
William Acrill, Richard Loe, Southey Simpson, and Peter Poythress. For the 
rest of the names, among which are those of Peyton Randolph, Washington, 
Isaac Read, Richard Baker, &c, see Burk quoted above. 

Mason in a letter to Washington (Writings of Washington, Vol. Ill, 354,) 
says that he had begun an address to the people which the weakness of his 
eyes compelled him to put aside. Whether it was finished or not, 1 cannot 
allirm. 

* See American Archives for 1774, Vol. I, Fourth Series; also Sparks, Writ- 
ings of Washington Vol. II, 488, Appendix No. 9. 



160 GEORGE MASON. 

ter on a public career. He had never been a member of the House 
of Burgesses, and it was not until the meeting of the Convention 
of July, 1775, that he appeared in the public councils. He had 
been returned in the place of Washington, who had been deputed 
to Congress, and the county of Fairfax may dwell with becoming 
pride on the recollection that, when her Washington was engaged 
in the public service abroad, she could substitute a Mason in his 
stead. Though not a member of the Convention of the previous 
March, he had approved the resolutions of Henry adopted at that 
session for putting the colony in a posture of defence, and now sus- 
tained a resolution of like nature, which provided "that a sufficient 
armed force be immediately raised and embodied, under proper offi- 
cers, for the defence and protection of the colony," and which re- 
sulted in the organization of the two first Virginia Regiments. We 
know from one of his letters* that this committee began its labors 
at seven in the morning, and sat until the meeting of the Conven- 
tion, which body rarely adjourned before five oclock. After a 

slight refreshment the committee a°;ain resumed its work, not retir- 
es o ' 

ing till ten. 

He was elected by the Convention a member of the Committee 
of Safety, his same standing on the list second only to that of Pen- 
dleton. At an early period of the session he was pressed to accept 
a seat in Congress, but he declined going abroad. Later in the ses- 
sion, on the retirement of Col. Bland, he was urgently solicited b} r 
Pendleton, Henry, Carrington, and others to go to Congress, and 
was put in nomination ; and when he rose in his place to assign his 
reasons for declining the appointment, tears were seen to flow from 
the eyes of Peyton Randolph, who presided in the body.t The 
Convention adjourned on the twenty-ninth of August, closing its la- 
bors with a formal "Declaration" addressed to the people, possibly 
from his pen, "setting forth the causes of their meeting, and the 
necessity of immediately putting the colony into a posture of de- 
fence, for the better protection of the lives, liberties, and proper- 
ties" of the people, and leaving the administration of the govern- 
ment in the hands of the Committee of Safety. 

* Mason to Cockburn in the Va. Historical Register, heretofore quoted. 

f An affecting account of the scene may be read in the letter of Mason to 
Cockburn, dated August 22, 1775, in the Virginia Historical Register. The 
cause of his declining was the recent death of Mrs. Mason, who left five sons 
and four daughters. 



GEORGE MASON. 161 

The duties of the Committee of Safety have already been detail- 
ed at length.* Suffice it to observe, that it was the supreme execu- 
tive of the colony in a time of civil war, and demanded of those 
who composed it the first order of wisdom, courage, and virtue. 
For such a station no man living was better qualified than Mason ; 
and he is entitled to a full share of the credit earned by that patri- 
otic body. 

It was, however, in the Convention now sitting, that Mason laid 
the deep foundations of his imperishable fame. The body met on 
the sixth of May ; but it was not until the eighteenth that Mason, 
who had been detained by a fit of the gout, took his seat. The 
resolution instructing the delegates of Virginia in Congress to pro* 
pose independence had been adopted three days before, when the 
Committee to prepare a declaration of rights and a plan of govern- 
ment was appointed.! But he was immediately placed on that 
committee. That it should have fallen to the lot of Mason, 
who came so late into a committee consisting of so many 
eminent men, to draft the declaration of rights and the plan of 
government, is a signal demonstration of his character, and dis- 
plaj^s the universal confidence reposed in his judgment and abili- 
ties. On the day of his arrival he was also assigned to the com- 
mittee of Propositions and Grievances, to the committee of Privi- 
leges and Elections, and to a select committee already organized for 
the encouragement of the making of salt, saltpetre and gunpowder. 
When it is remembered that but a small proportion of the members 
by ancient parliamentary usage was placed upon committees, and 
that Mason, though arriving late, was immediately placed on all the 
important ones, a striking proof is presented of the estimation in 
which he was held by his contemporaries at this early stage of his 
career. The ordinance establishing a general test was drawn by 
him. 

The declaration of rights was reported by the select committee to 
the house on the twenty-seventh day of May, and on the 12th of 

* In the sketch of Pendleton. 

f It would seem that the resolution proposing the instructions in favor of in- 
dependence, though nominally unanimous, had some opponents in the house. 
Mason, writing to R. H. Lee on the 18th of May, 1776, says : " The opponenti 
being so few that they did not think fit to divide, or contradict the general 
voice." See the letter in the archives of the Historical Society. In the same 
letter he says of the preamble to the resolution, that " it is tedious, rather 
timid, and in many instances exceptionable." 
11 



162 GEORGE MASON. 

June "the Declaration of Rights made by the good people of Vir- 
ginia, assembled in full and free Convention, — which rights do 
pertain to them and their posterity as the basis and foundation of 
government," was adopted by an unanimous vote. 

Posterity will rejoice that the drafting of the Declaration of 
Rights devolved on George Mason. The texture of his mind was 
essentially republican. When the dominion of the crown was over- 
turned, of all our distinguished statesmen, Jefferson and Mason 
seemed most at home on the new and difficult ground which they 
were treading. With the history of England Mason was familiar; 
and he knew the landmarks of every concession in favor of liberty 
from Magna Carta to the revolution which placed William and 
Mary on the British throne. No person who had not studied 
English history in the spirit of a philosopher and a statesman could 
have written the Declaration. It has been compared to the Peti- 
tion of Right ; but it is altogether a paper of a far higher order of 
merit. The Petition simply enumerates the laws of the land which 
had been violated, and prays that the laws aforesaid shall hence- 
forth be observed ; but the Declaration of Rights lays down the 
principles on which all good government ought to rest. The dif- 
ference between the Petition and the Declaration is the difference 
between the scheme of an architect who proposes a plan for the re- 
pair of a particular structure, and the scheme of an architect who 
prescribes the principles on which all structures should be reared 
and kept in constant repair. The same remark" applies with equal 
force to the Declaration of Rights adopted by the Convention which 
called William and Mary to the throne. That celebrated instru- 
ment, so fit to effect the object in view, is a mere recapitulation of 
the acts of misgovernment which rendered a revolution necessary, 
and a formal declaration that the principles which had been Avan- 
tonly violated by the deposed king w r ere among the ancient rights 
and liberties of England. No new franchise was acquired by the 
people. There was not a curb placed on the kingly prerogative 
which had not existed before. The omnipotence of parliament was 
unassailed. It was wholly historical and retrospective in its scope. 
The Virginia Declaration was eminently prospective. It marked 
out the rules by which the entire fabric of government should be 
framed and controlled : rules which bound with equal severity the 
legislative, the judicial, and the executive departments. It is a cu- 



GEORGE MASON. 163 

rious illustration of the supremacy accorded to genius in great con- 
junctures, that the British Declaration of Right and the Virginia 
Declaration of Rights were written by men who had recently taken 
their seats for the first time in deliberative assemblies which were 
composed of the oldest and ablest statesmen of their respective pe- 
riods. When Somers drafted the Declaration of Right, he had 
spoken in the House of Commons for the first time only ten davs 
before, and the parliamentary experience of Mason was hardly 
more extended. When we reflect, however, that Somers was an 
able lawyer, deeply versed in constitutional learning; that he lived in 
a country the proudest honors of which were approached most 
readily by the law ; that he had lately been engaged in the most 
interesting state trial of that age, in the course of which the pre- 
rogative of the king had been keenly scanned ; and that, while he 
was writing, his powers were quickened and his spirits cheered by 
the contemplation of that coronet which he was winning and which 
he was soon to wear; and that Mason was a planter, untutored in 
the schools, w r hose life now verging to its decline had been spent in a 
thinly settled colony which presented no sphere for ambition ; that 
he had never moved beyond the sound of the rustling leaves of his 
native woods or the ripple of his native stream ; and that he was so 
devoted to his home that it was with difficulty he could be per- 
suaded to forsake for a season the solitudes of Gunston Hall, the se- 
nius of the Virginian appears in bolder relief when contrasted with 
the genius of his illustrious prototype. 

The Virginia Declaration of Rights is, indeed, a remarkable 
production. As an intellectual effort, it possesses exalted merit. 
It is the quintessence of all the great principles and doctrines of 
freedom which had been wrought out by the people of England 
from the earliest times. To have written such a paper required 
the taste of the scholar, the wisdom of the statesman, and the pu- 
rity of the patriot. The critical eye can detect in its sixteen sec- 
tions the history of England in miniature. That it should have 
been thrown off by a planter hastily summoned from his plough to 
fill a vacancy in the public councils ; who was not a member of that 
profession the pursuits of which bring its votaries more directly than 
any other into contact with the principles of political liberty ; and 
who performed his work so thoroughly that it has neither received 
nor required any alteration or amendment for more than three- 



164 GEORGE MASON. 

fourths of a century, fills the mind with admiration and grandeur. 
Nor has it attained its present excellence by the aid of the com- 
mittee by which it was reported, nor of the committee of the whole 
house to which it was referred. With the exception of the first ar- 
ticle, which was amended, as I have heard at second hand from a 
member of the select committee, by the insertion of the words: 
" When men enter into a state of society," it was approved very 
nearly as it Was written.* By the two Conventions of the state 
which have asembled since it was adopted, it has been ratified 
without note or comment. It received the applause of the gene- 
ration which hailed its birth, and of those generations which have 
passed away, and will receive the applause of those to come. Its 
great doctrines, as before observed, are the paramount doctrines of 
British freedom. Some of its expressions may be gleaned from 
Sidney, from Locke, and from Burgh ; but when Mason sat down 
in his room in the Raleigh Tavern to write that paper, it is probable 
that no copy of the Reply to Sir Robert Filmer, or of the Essay on 
Government, or of the Political Disquisitions, was within his reach.! 
The diction, the design, the thoughts, are all his own. Nor does 
its beauty or its worth suffer in comparison with similar productions 
carefully prepared at a later day. The bill of rights, adopted by 
Massachusetts three years afterwards, contains most of its articles 
evidently copied with a servile though able hand ; but cannot vie 
in point and in elegance with the paper from the pen of Mason. 

Nor does the glory of the Declaration of Rights of the twelfth of 
June by the Virginia Convention yield to the glory of the Decla- 
ration of Independence of the fourth of the following July by the 
General Congress. In an intellectual view, it occupies a far loftier 
position. It stands without a model in ancient or in recent times. 
It is the philosophical embodiment of the elemental principles 
which lie at the foundation of society, and which, gathered from 
the universal experience of man, and refined in the alembic of a 
mighty mind, are digested and expressed with a distinctness and 
with a severe simplicity intelligible alike by the young and the old, 
by the unlettered and the wise. The Declaration of Independence 

* Carrington Memoranda. Mason says in a letter to a friend in Europe, pub- 
lished in the Historical Register, that the amendments rather injured than im- 
proved it. 

] An American edition of Burgh had appeared the year before, and it was a 
favorite book with all our early statesmen. Mr. Jefferson delighted to praise it. 



GEORGE MASON. 165 

is mainly a detail of wrongs so sensibly felt as to justify a change 
of government, and therefore easily enumerated, which required as 
little argument as research, and the supreme merit of which is that 
a plain tale, which, if badly told, might have made a slight impres- 
sion on the age, has been adorned with all the graces with which 
genius could invest it. It is not in dispute whether Jefferson 
could have written the Declaration of Rights as well as Mason 
did write it, nor whether Mason could have written the De- 
claration of Independence with the grace of Jefferson. It is 
whether the Declaration of Rights, as a work of intellect, is not a 
paper of a far higher character than a mere Declaration of the rea- 
sons however well put forth, which impelled the colonies to sepa- 
rate from the mother-country, and to assume independence. One 
is the admirable work of the political philosopher ; the other is the 
chaste production of the elegant historian ; and, as to perform a 
noble act is more glorious than to record it, so is philosophy of 
higher dignity than history, and the Declaration of Rights than the 
Declaration of Independence. It is the merit of Mason and Jeffer- 
son that both in their respective spheres performed their office in 
such a manner as to call forth the gratitude and admiration of their 
country ; while it is apparent to the reflecting observer that the no- 
ble qualities of mind and statesmanship exhibited by Mason in the 
Declaration of Rights far surpass those exhibited by Jefferson in 
the Declaration of Independence.* 

On the twenty-fourth of June, Archibald Cary reported the plan 
of government, which was read by the Clerk the first time, and or- 
dered to be read a second time. On the twenty-sixth, it was read 
a second time, and referred to the committee of the whole. It was 
discussed on the twenty-seventh, and on the twenty-eighth the plan 
w r as reported to the house with amendments which were severally 
concurred in, and the whole was ordered to be transcribed, and read a 
third time. And on the twenty-ninth of June, 1776, the first consti- 
tution of Virginia, which was the first written constitution of a sover- 
eign state known among men,t and which was destined to diffuse 

• A copy of the original Declaration as presented to the Committee in the 
handwriting of Mason may be seen neatly framed in the library of Virginia. 

f Curtis in his history of the Constitution of the United States (Vol. I, 139) 
has ths following sentence: "The Student of American constitutional history, 
therefore, cannot fail to see, that the adoption of the first written constitution was 
accomplished through great and magnanimous sacrifices." If the term " the 
first written constitution" be understood in the sense of the first form of gov- 



166 GEOKGE MASON. 

prosperity and happiness among the people for more than half a cen- 
tury, and long after those who framed it, with one illustrious excep- 
tion, had passed away, was adopted by an unanimous vote. The 
preamble was written by Mr. JefFerson, who transmitted it to Wil- 
liamsburg, but the main body of the instrument was the work of 
Mason. 

Unfortunately the mode of procedure in the select committee 
which reported the constitution has not come down io us; but we 
are able to form very definite and conclusive conjectures upon the 
subject. It would seem that the modern method of offering dis- 
tinct propositions in the form of resolutions, as in the Convention 
which formed the federal constitution and in our subsequent Con- 
ventions, had not then been adopted ; but the general outline of the 
proposed plan of government was presented at once. Two of these 
schemes have reached us : the plan of Mr. Jefferson which from 
its late presentation was not formally acted upon, and the plan of 
Mason, which with amendments in its details was finally adopted. 
To show the peculiar merit of Mason's plan, it should be observed 
that the task of the select committee was to prepare a plan of gov- 
ernment, and it was quite within the range of its powers to have re- 
ported a system nearly equivalent to the British constitution. In 
the British government the power of parliament is supreme. It 
may limit the succession to the crown. It may displace the king, 
and consign him to the scaffold. There is no superior law, fairly 
recorded and exposed to view, which limits its powers, and by a 
reference to which its acts may be measured. The importance of 
such a rule for the ordinary legislature was apparent to Mason, and 
he was the first to prescribe it. The three great departments of 
government were nominally distinct and independent in the British 
constitution; but it is to the wisdom of Mason that we owe the great 
American principle, that the legislative, the most dangerous of all, 
should be bound by a rule as stringent as the executive and the ju- 
dicial. Nor does the form of a constitution, as appears to be a mat- 
ter cf course at the present day, necessarily imply such a limitation 
of the legislative department. Even in a republic the legislature 

eminent of the United States, which may be its fair and proper meaning:, it is 
well enough ; but if he meant to convey the impression that the Articles of Con- 
federation, which were not adopted until 1781, were the " first written constitu- 
tion," it is plain that the constitution of Virginia preceded the Articles of Con- 
federation nearly five years in point of time. 



GEORGE MASON. 16*7 

might still have been supreme. It is therefore the peculiar honor 
of Mason that he not only drafted the first regular plan of govern- 
ment of a sovereign state, but circumscribed the different depart- 
ments by limits which they may not transcend. This was the 
second great trophy won by the genius of Mason in the Convention 
now assembled. 

The day after the adoption of the constitution, the Convention in 
pursuance of its provisions, proceeded to elect a Governor and 
Council, and deputed Mason at the head of a committee to inform 
Patrick Henry of his election as chief magistrate of the Common- 
wealth. He was appointed chairman of the committee to draft the 
oaths to be taken by the Governor and Council ; and it is not un- 
worthy of notice, as showing the confidence of the body in his 
judgment and abilities, that on purely legal subjects he was placed 
at the head of committees consisting of the ablest lawyers. 
That he was subsequently appointed a member of the celebrated 
committee of Revisors is known to all. 

The last duty assigned him by the Convention was to assist in 
the preparation of a seal for the new Commonwealth.* Under the 
regal government the coat of arms of Virginia was one of the most 
imposing in the colonies. Two knights clad in armor supported a 
shield on which were quartered the emblems of England, Scotland, 
Ireland and France ; and beneath the shield was the honorable 
motto: En dat Virginia Quartam ! Surmounting the shield was 
the half statue of Pocahontas. 

The design adopted by the committee was not less fortunate in 
conception nor less striking in execution than the royal effigy which 

* The Committee consisted of R. H. Lee, Mason, Nicholas, and Wythe. 
Three designs appear from Girardin (IV, Appendix) to have heen before the 
Committee : one from Dr. Franklin, another from M. de Cimatiere of Philadel- 
phia, and the one ultimately adopted, which Girardin, without naming his au- 
thority, ascribes to Mr. Wythe. Its designs are taken from Spence's Poly- 
metis. Mason reported the design of the present seal to the House, on the eve 
of the adjournment. See Journal of the Convention of May 1776, page 86. 
As some discussion has taken place in the Va. Historical Register about the 
motto inscribed on the old stove, — " En dat Virginia Quartam ;" one of the 
writers contending that it should have been " En dat Virginia Quintum ;" it 
may be well enough to say that the last named motto was the one originally 
taken on the settlement of Virginia, and may be found in the early London edi- 
tions of Capt. John Smith's work and as late as Beverly; but at a subsequent 
period the first named was substituted in its stead, and was usually prefixed to 
the title page of the Acts of Assembly. The acts for the tenth year of George 
the Third in folio, printed by William Rind, are now before me, and contain the 
coat of arms with the motto : En dat Virginia Quartam. 



168 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

it was designed to supersede. The figure of Virtue, erect and tri- 
umphant, resting on a spear with one hand, and holding a sword in 
the other ; treading on a tyrant whose crown has fallen from his head, 
and in whose left hand is a broken chain and in the right a scourge; 
with the motto: Sic semper Tyrahnis; tells with graphic fidelity not 
only the story of our independence but the simple majesty of the 
men who portrayed it on the standard of our country. It was Mason 
who reported to the Convention this device for the ensign of Vir- 
ginia, and whose fame will ever float in its folds. So long as Vir- 
ginia preserves her flag untarnished and free, the fame of Mason is 
safe. But should her banner be stained or ingloriously lost, could 
he speak from his grave, he would be content that his own reputa- 
tion should perish in the ruin which was destined to overwhelm the 
independence and honor of his beloved country. 

The history of Mason subsequent to the adjournment of the Con- 
vention, as a member of the House of Delegates, as a statesman 
consulted in his retirement by the ablest politicians on all the great- 
est and most delicate state and national questions of the times, as a 
member of the Convention which framed the federal constitution, 
and of the Virginia Convention which ratified it, of deep and sur- 
passing interest as it is, we must postpone for another occasion.* 

If George Mason was the Michael Angelo who laid the foundations 
and prescribed the proportions of the new government, Thomas 
Jefferson was the Raphael who imparted to it its peculiar grace 
and effect. If Mason drafted the Declaration of Rights and the plan 
of government, it was Jefferson who devised those measures which 
were most effectual in imparting vigor and practicability to the new 
system. No mistake is more common than to underrate the value 
of an improvement in science or in the arts from its apparent sim- 
plicity, and from its obvious adaptedness to our present purposes. 
The printer's boy, who sees his types arranged in their cases or 
scattered over the floor, can scarcely believe that those moveable 
pieces of lead which seem so simple as to require no skill in the 
making, were one of the most remarkable inventions of human g;e- 
nius. The youthful gunner, who has heard that gunpowder is made 
at a common factory out of three simple ingredients, rarely reflects 
that its invention wrought one of the most marked revolutions re- 

* For the Discourse on the Virginia Federal Convention. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 169 

corded in history. So in contemplating the measures proposed by 
Jefferson during the first session of the General Assembly and sub- 
sequently, such is their obvious harmony with a republican system, 
we are apt to regard them as matters of course, and the immediate 
and inevitable result of the new order of things. Yet nothing would 
be more untrue, or more injurious to the reputation to which every 
benefactor of his race is entitled, than such an opinion. Primoge- 
niture, entails, the connection of the church with the state, so far 
from exciting unpleasant feelings in the breasts of a large, intel- 
ligent, and wealthy class of people, who held the control of the 
public councils, had been a portion of the inherited public opinion 
of the Anglo-Saxon race for at least a thousand years. Nor was 
there anything in either absolutely incompatible with a republican 
form of government. Any man of a weak head and a base heart 
may still, if he pleases, bequeath all his property to his eldest son, 
may cut off the rest of his children with a penny, and may by legal 
contrivances transmit his property in a descending line for a certain 
period ; and the custom still exists in some of the New England 
States of laying taxes for the support of religion. That property 
should be free to be disposed of by the generation which holds and 
protects it, and that the children of common parents should share the 
common property, and that every man should be at liberty to support 
any system of public worship most acceptable to him, or none at 
all, are principles which have taken such deep root as to seem a 
part of the general mind, the instinct of our common nature, and 
the necessary and the inseparable concomitants of a republican form 
of government. It is to Jefferson that these popular amendments 
of our colonial policy are due. Some of the ablest and purest men 
of the Revolution, who had been among the first to risk their lives 
and fortunes in the cause, adhered to the old opinions, and fought 
so gallantly in their defence, that, notwithstanding the sixteenth 
section of the Declaration of Rights, the act for establishing reli- 
gious freedom did not become a law until nine years after the decla- 
ration of independence. In these contests Mason and Jefferson 
stood side by side. In the decline of his long and honored life, re- 
calling the struggles of this period, Jefferson, with that modesty 
peculiar to great minds, thus speaks of Mason : "I had many occa- 
sional and strenuous coadjutors in debate; and one most steadfast, 
able and zealous; who was himself a host. This was George Ma- 



170 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

son, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted on 
the theatre of the Revolution, of expansive mind, profound judg- 
ment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former consti- 
tution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic princi- 
ples. His elocution wes neither flowing nor smooth ; but his Ian- ' 
guage was strong, his manner most impressive, and strengthened by 
a dash of biting cynicism, when provocation made it seasonable." 

One lesson that well deserves attention may be drawn from this 
subject. The three principal measures of reform proposed by Jef- 
ferson were designed to effect immediately the most radical change 
ever made in so short a time in the institutions of any people. Be- 
side such an innovation the dissolution of the tie which bound the 
colonies to the mother country seemed comparatively trifling. That 
tie was in a certain sense rather theoretical than practical. The 
colony always enacted its own laws, and though the assent of 
the king was necessary to their validity, that assent on most sub- 
jects followed as a matter of course. But the laws of primogeni- 
ture, of entails, and of an established church, were so intimately 
interwoven with the existing polity, that it would seem a priori im- 
possible to have assailed them with success. But the bold and 
decisive statesmanship of Jefferson did not hesitate for an instant. 

* Jefferson's Works, I, 33. Garland in his life of Randolph (I, 19) quotes as 
from John Randolph a sentiment deprecating the alteration of the old law by the 
Virginia statute of descents : "Well might old George Mason say that the au- 
thors of that law, (Pendleton, Wythe, and Jefferson) never had a son." That 
Randolph did make such a remark I have reason to believe from evidence in my 
possession, but I am quite sure that George Mason never uttered such a senti- 
ment. In the the first place, we are told by Mr. Jefferson (Vol. I, 35,) that, 
with the exception of Pendleton, the Re visors agreed on the principles of the 
law of descents; secondly, in the sketch of Mason by Jefferson quoted in the 
text, Mason is said to have been " earnest for the republican change on demo- 
cratic principles;" which could not be said of an advocate of primogeniture and 
entails ; thirdly, if Mason had made such a remark, he would not have included 
Pendleton, who warmly opposed the change in the committee of Revisors and in 
the House of Delegates. But in truth the remark could not have been made by 
Mason ; for when Jefferson reported the draft, he was not more than thirty-four 
or five years of age, and had married a short time before a lady seven or eight 
years younger than himself, by whom he had several children, though, as she 
died early, he had no son. But Jefferson was still young, and might have mar- 
ried again, and have had a large family after the death of Mason in 17P2. The 
probability is that the fact that neither Pendleton, Wythe, nor Jefferson, had a 
son, gave rise to the remark, which is probably the product of the present cen- 
tury, and which was fathered upon Mason who could not have made it. 

As Mason was attached to the Episcopal Church, and was a member of the 
vestry of Truro parish, it has been thought that he was opposed to the discon- 
nection of the church from the state; but not only does the remark of Mr. Jef- 
ferson quoted above disprove any such thing, but the sixteenth section of the 
bill of rights settles the question under his own hand. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 171 

He appeared to survey the whole ground before him not so much 
with the eye of a contemporary actor, as with the eye of the 
representative of a distant posterity. That a comparatively young 
man should have had the wisdom to suggest, and the moral cour- 
age to sustain, a series of measures so opposed to existing preju- 
dices, and so appropriate to the occasion, that in the long interval 
of near eighty years we cannot see wherein they might have 
been improved or altered to advantage, and that such a policy was 
the result of his own reflections unaided by the example of the 
past, is not the least wonder of that wondrous age. 

Jefferson, who was deputed to Congress, though a member of 
the present Convention, did not take his seat in the body. 
Yet his name is forever associated with the result of its labors. 
The preamble to the constitution was from his pen. And it is not 
our purpose to trace his course at length. His education at this 
College, his tutelage under the eye of Wythe, his course in the Gen- 
eral Congress, his course as the second chief magistrate of this 
Commonwealth, his mission to France, his course in the federal 
government as Secretary of State, as Vice President, and as Presi- 
dent, his useful services as the founder and patron of the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, that child of his old age and the delight of his 
eyes, have been fully recorded. In the Congress of 1776 the de- 
claration of independence has made his name immortal. At a 
later period in the same body, with that perspicacity which seemed 
rather the result of inspiration than of deliberate calculation which 
it assuredly was, he devised the currency of dollars and cents; — 
a system so simple as to bear away the palm from schemes sanc- 
tioned by the highest names which were brought in competition 
with it, and so perfect as in the lapse of seventy years to need no 
amendment. In whatever position he was placed, he seemed to 
have been made for that alone. At the brilliant court of Louis the 
Sixteenth, his modesty which was shown in answer to the ques- 
tion whether he filled the place of Franklin,* the elegance of his 
manners, his thorough knowledge of the interests of his country, 
his honesty and sincerity in diplomatic affairs, which were in- 
stantly seen and appreciated, his love of science and letters which 
placed him in communion with the publicists and scholars who 

* "No one can fill his place, I am his successor." 



172 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

were then preparing the public mind for the great event which 
overcast the age, and, with all his ardor in the cause of liberty 
and letters, keeping steadily inside the strict line of diplomatic re- 
serve, won the confidence and esteem of the king and of the French 
nation. He was quite as successful in the cabinet as the first 
Secretary of State under the federal government. Brilliant and 
rapid in his conceptions, he was as conspicuous for the severe and 
protracted labor which he underwent in the preparation of elabo- 
rate commercial reports as he was for the ability and eloquence of 
his strictly diplomatic correspondence. Of his career as Presi- 
dent of the United States, this is not the place to speak in detail. 
It may be said, however, as it was the chief ambition of the states- 
men of old, so it was his peculiar glory, to give a magnificent em- 
pire to his country ; and that, in a complication of embarrassments 
in which the troubled state of Europe involved him, and from 
which he could not have disengaged himself either by what he did 
or by what he failed to do, he enjoyed to the close of his term in 
as great a degree as had been enjoyed before, or has been enjoyed 
since, the confidence and the affections of the people. 

His tastes and amusements were made subservient to the inter- 
ests of his country. It is mainly owing to his timely research and 
provident care that our Statutes at Large have been preserved in 
their present condition. No fact relating to our history and laws, 
to our manners and customs, to our soil, whether in regard of the 
forests which grow upon its surface, or of the animals which ranged 
through those forests or nestled in their branches, or lie buried be- 
neath them ; or its minerals, or the length and breadth and depth 
of its rivers, or of the changes of the temperature and the course 
of the winds, escaped his notice in early life as in mature age. 
When the date of preparation and the degree of accessible infor- 
mation on its topics are considered, no light production of that day 
indicated greater habitual industry than the Notes on Virginia. 
The force and freedom and occasional beauty of its st}de, the 
originality of its views in politics, in law, and in physical science, 
and the fearlessness With which he exhibited them, are hardly less 
admirable than the extensive research which appears on almost 
every page. His industry and judgment in the preservation of 
the materials of history were equalled only by the liberality with 
which he dispensed them. He was consulted on almost every 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 173 

topic of American history, of science, and of religion in its con- 
nection with the common law, and he not only wrote well on every 
question presented to him, but freely opened his stores to the re- 
searches of others. Without his aid Girardin could not have 
written his history. Burk and Wirt are deeply indebted to him. 
The removal of his collections to Washington was an irreparable 
loss to Virginia, and regret for their removal is more bitter since their 
recent destruction by fire in the Capitol. There was an universality 
in his tastes quite uncommon among men whose fame is political. 
He leaned to the sciences more than to literature ; yet he was 
versed in the English classics, and had studied the Latin, the 
Greek, the French, the Spanish, the Italian, and the Anglo-Saxon. 
His domestic tastes were of a practical turn. He superintended 
at home the construction of his own wood and iron work, often 
wrought in the shop with his own hands, and, like Washington, 
had invented a plough of his own, which obtained a premium in 
Paris. He had a love of architecture, and a fine sense of beauty, 
as his own mansion and the buildings of the University show, and, 
if it be urged that in those structures usefulness is in some degree 
sacrificed for beauty, and that they are better suited to the French 
than the English notion of domestic comfort, their design must be 
conceded to be altogether classical and elegant. He noted to the 
last the changes of temperature and the course of winds, and made 
experiments in physics. And in his life and conversation it were 
difficult to say whether the practical philosopher or the politician 
held the sway. 

His eminent qualities were set off by a graceful and imposing 
person. His height exceeded six feet ; his form was spare ; his 
step even in old age light and springy ; his hair was inclined to 
red. His eyes were blue, and had a most benignant expression. 
His head, which would seem to be large in the portrait by Stuart, 
was by measurement really small. In conversation all his features 
were most expressive. Posterity will probably receive the most 
life-like impression of his face and form from the statue by Gait, 
whose chisel 

" Gives more than female beauty to a stone, 
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips."* 

* Had the author of the Task seen the exquisite smile that plays on the lips 
of the Bacchante of Gait, or the sweet, pensive, spiritual face of his Psyche, 



174 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

In his address he was hardly equalled by any of his contempora- 
ries. His manners, which were originally moulded in the society of 
Williamsburg when Wythe and Small and Fauquier were its bril- 
liant ornaments, and which were chastened by long experience in 
the most elegant circles of France and America, were so simple 
and retiring, so refined yet so cordial, that indifference was quick- 
ened into love, and strong political prejudices have been known to 
melt away in a personal interview with him. Like his preceptor 
Wythe, he was through life strictly temperate in his diet, and never 
indulged in those vinous excesses which were too common in the 
colon}- and in the early days of the Commonwealth. He never 
lost his teeth. He used the cold bath daily, and recommended the 
practice to his friends as a specific against colds. He retained his 
erect carriage to the last. 

Jefferson, if we may so speak, was born a reformer. He shrunk 
from no change which seemed desirable in his eyes. He regarded 
every question in politics, in morals, and in religion, as an open 
question, deriving no sanctity from time or association, and to be 
decided on its intrinsic merits. Before the Revolution he had 
sought the abolition of the slave trade, and he denounced that 
infamous traffic in such severe terms in the original draft of the 
Declaration of Independence that Northern and Southern men 
alike united in striking those passages from that paper.* No man 

or the manly face of his Columbus, such as he was when on the deck of hig 
ship he first hailed the shores of the New World, his noble features even in the 
flush of triumph bearing a cast of coming sadness, he would have divided 
with the young Virginia sculptor the praise which he has so generously awarded 
to Bacon. The bust only of Jefferson in plaster is thus far finished by 
Gait, and will ere long be taken to Italy to be put in marble. The face of 
the bust is said to be a capital likeness of Mr. Jefferson. There is something 
highly gratifying to our Virginia pride that the head of such a man as Jefferson 
should present its fairest representation to futurity through the genius of a Vir- 
ginian. 

* In allusion to the striking out that part of the Declaration of Independence 
relating to the slave trade, Curtis in his History of the Constitution (vol. I, 88,) 
observes : " But this was not one of the grievances to be redressed by the 
Revolution ; it did not constitute one of the reasons for aiming at indepen- 
dence ; and there was no sufficient ground for the accusation that the govern- 
ment of Great Britain had knowingly sought to excite general insurrection 
among the slaves. The rejection of this passage from the Declaration shows 
that the Congress did not consider this charge to be as tenable as all their other 
complaints certainly were." 

If Mr. Curtis will turn to the records of Virginia, he will find that this 
charge against the British king is fully sustained. The act of the House of 
Burgesses seeking to put an end to the traffic, and the proclamation of Dun- 
more of Nov. 7th, 1775, summoning all persons capable of bearing arms to his 
standard, and offering freedom to all slaves who should join him, and whom he 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 175 

living save himself would have dared to grapple at one and the 
same time with the laws of primogeniture, of entails, and of an 
established church, and to seek their instant and unconditional 
overthrow. Boldness in this instance was the height of wisdom. 
Had he postponed his assaults until the filaments of prejudice, 
which had been broken by the Declaration of Independence, had 
begun to re-unite, nothing short of a new revolution could have rent 
them asunder. Nor did he desire novelty for the sake of novelty. 
When Pendleton leaned to the codification of the common law, 
the practical sense of Jefferson opposed the scheme at the onset. 
He may seem in our day to have erred in some of his views ; but, 
as, like all great reformers, he was ahead of public opinion on some 
topics, and appealed to the future as well as to the present, candor 
might teach us to await the forthcoming award ere we arraign his 
wisdom. As a politician in that sense of the term which consists 
in guiding and controlling public opinion, though ridiculed in his 
day as a philosopher, he was unsurpassed in ancient or in modern 
times. He seemed to have sprung into existence, like Minerva 
from the brain of Jove, full-grown and well-armed. He seemed to 
have passed through no noviciate. From the day on which he 
drafted in the House of Burgesses his report in reply to the propo- 
sitions of Lord North to the day when from his mountain home he 
saw the turrets of the University glistening in the morning sun, he 
never lost his control over the public opinion of his age. If it be 
urged that in the cabinet of Washington his star waned before that 
of Hamilton — and for the sake of illustration we concede as a fact 
that which, when properly considered, is no fact at all — it was a 
momentary obscuration rather apparent than real — under a concen- 
tration of forces which would have driven from its sphere any 
other political luminary then in the firmament. Had Jefferson not 
existed or been other than he was, the policy which sought the 
protection of the venerated name of Washington, would have 

instantly armed, settle the question at once. The present Convention in the 
preamble to the Constitution first brought the subject forward, as Virginia was 
the first to sutler, in these words : " By prompting our negroes to rise in amis among 
us, those very negroes, whom by an inhuman use of his negative, he had refused us 
permission to exclude by law." As stated in a preceding note the leading 
statesmen of Virginia at the time of the Revolution were opposed to slavery 
and were anxious at least to put an end to the introduction of negroes from 
Africa ; but Georgia and South Carolina were not disposed to abolish the traffic, 
and it is not improbable that the commercial and navigating interests of New 
England were equally averse from such a measure. 



176 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

descended for generations. The wonder is, not that he failed for a 
time to make head against an accidental majority in Congress 
which was sustained by the commercial and monetary interests of 
the country, and by that band of upright and honorable men who 
were deluded to believe that the zeal with which they might uphold 
that policy was the surest test of the unbounded affection which 
they cherished for the Father of his Country; but that in a con- 
test with such odds pressing upon him, he was able in so short a 
time to separate that powerful party into so many fragments that a 
corporal's guard could scarcely be mustered against him. It has 
been fashionable of late in certain quarters to give Hamilton the 
precedence on the score of abilities over Jefferson. Far be it from 
us to detract from the merits of that illustrious man, whose valor 
won its latest and brightest triumph on the soil of this Common- 
wealth, who was the oracle of the forum and the ornament of the 
cabinet as he was the pride of war, and who in the vigor of life 
amid the tears of a nation went down to a bloody grave ; but con- 
ceding to his civic merits the meed of high applause, we must still 
contend that those merits did not reach the standard of Jefferson. 
Perhaps the individual best qualified to decide on the respective 
abilities of these two eminent men was James Madison. He had 
followed Hamilton step by step from the beginning of his career to 
its untimely close, and he had viewed him in the double aspect of 
a political friend and a political opponent. In the decline of life, 
when the fires of party, if indeed they ever raged in that gentle 
breast, had burned out, he affirmed that it would take more than 
one Hamilton to make a Jefferson. As politicians, in the sense of 
ruling the affections and the will of the people, there is hardly 
ground for comparison between men, one of whom was the 
successful champion of a great party reared mainly under his 
auspices, and the influence of which is felt to this hour, and the 
other of whom, though the accredited heir of the popularity of the 
purest name in human history, could not secure the State in which 
he lived from the grasp of his foe, and in his short life saw not only 
the extinction of the party to which he belonged, but the very 
name of that party held in disrepute and openly disavowed. Nor 
is the comparison between these eminent men more favorable to 
Hamilton, when regarded in the light of the master-spirits of a 
great era. Hamilton was eminently conservative. He had but 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 17*7 

little faith in the capacity of the people for self-government. He 
honestly believed that the British system was the wisest of human 
polities ; and though determined at every hazard to give the new 
system a fair trial, he could not conceal from himself nor from 
others the belief that the country might yet be compelled to fall 
back upon the British model. In an old established system he 
would have been at home. There his peculiar genius would have 
reigned supreme. As the colleague of the younger Pitt, whether in 
the field, in the cabinet, or on the floor of the House of Commons, 
he would have proved the ablest lieutenant that ever ranged under 
the banner of party. But as the guide of a people resolved to shed 
the slough of monarchy, and to establish popular institutions, he 
was measurably, and, in a certain sense, out of place. And that 
place was the place of Jefferson. With the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence came the establishment of the Virginia Constitution; and 
while the fires of the Revolution were laying waste the land, Jeffer- 
son planned and carried into immediate effect the leading measures 
necessary to sustain a republican system as deliberately as he could 
have done in a time of profound peace. He never looked back. 
He never despaired of the republic. He believed, and always 
through life acted on the belief, that the people were wise and 
honest enough to uphold those institutions which were obviously 
designed for their benefit, and which were the work of their own 
hands. As a Statesman, the career of Jefferson in the House of 
Burgesses, in the General Congress, in the House of Delegates and 
as Secretary of State, has received the commendation of all impar- 
tial persons who have watched it closely. It is not unusual, how- 
ever, .to sneer at the policy which he was compelled to adopt, 
during his administration of the federal government, in relation to 
our foreign affairs. Non-intercourse and embargo are with many, 
even at this day, the synonyms of fear and folly. This is not the 
place, at the close of a discourse already extended beyond its 
prescribed limits, to discuss those subjects in detail; but a defer- 
ence to a common prejudice requires a passing remark. It may be 
observed that nothing is more unjust than to condemn measures of 
policy from considerations which are the result of subsequent 
developments. And judging by these developments, it may be 
affirmed, perhaps, that the wisest course which Jefferson ought to 
have adopted in the beginning of our commercial troubles with 
12 



178 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

France and England would have been to declare war with both 
nations. But Jefferson had to deal with the present and not with 
the future. The continent of Europe was involved in a war of 
life and death. It was a contest for national existence, and in 
comparison with which the present European embroilment is but 
the play of the nursery. In the course of the struggle France had 
become the unprincipled bandit of the land, and England the 
ruthless robber of the sea. The laws of nations were set at naught 
equally by both belligerents. To protect our commerce from the 
hostile powers was impossible. If our ships touched the British 
coast they were forfeitable to France ; if they touched a French 
port, they were forfeitable to England. Our sailors, born on that soil 
which had been made free by the valor of their fathers, were seized 
on the decks of their ships, and were transferred by thousands to 
British men-of-war in which they were compelled to fight the 
battles of England, or to be torn by the lash. Even at this distance 
of time the indignation of every American glows so fiercely when 
he contemplates the injuries which were then inflicted on his 
unoffending and defenceless country, that he is hardly willing to 
allow that any statute of limitations should bar his right of 
vengeance. War with both nations was, indeed, justifiable ; but 
war in our defenceless state, besides other inconveniences which 
would "row out of it, would give England the right to persist in 
conduct which in time of peace was an outrage on neutral rights, 
and for the redress of which she was amenable to the laws of 
nations ; and in so far as keeping our ships at home was concerned i 
and which constituted the leading objection to the policy adopted 
by the president, war was the most effectual act of non-intercourse 
and embargo that could be desired. But the very violence of the 
contest which devastated Europe was in the estimation of reflecting 
men a presage of its cessation at no distant period, when the sense 
of justice of the contending parties might be appealed to with 
success. To go to war was to take redress in our own hands ; and was, 
without raining any essential benefit, to wipe off all our accounts 
with the offending parties. A measure which would at once enable 
us to save our ships, and leave us free to avail ourselves of the 
chapter of accidents which might open favorably at any moment, 
seemed to be the most plausible means of relief; and in this view 
non-intercourse and an embargo were successively adopted. And 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 1*70 

when war was ultimately declared by Madison, it was ascertained 
that if the declaration of it had been postponed a few weeks longer, 
the obnoxious orders in council would have been rescinded, and the 
means of redress would have been within our reach. When we 
estimate the number of lives which were sacrificed by the war, the 
millions of treasure expended in its prosecution, and, beside other 
calamitous results, the sacrifice of all claim for the remuneration 
of previous wrongs, of which war was the consequence, we cannot 
but respect the policy of Jefferson which postponed an appeal to 
arms. We may truly deplore the embarrassments in our foreign 
affairs which cramped his administration, and we may look forward 
with conscious pride to the time when we may be able to punish 
similar wrongs even though inflicted by the combined navies of the 
world ; but it may well be doubted whether the wit of man could 
have devised in the existing state of the country more effectual 
measures of relief than those which were proposed by him and 
which were approved by the party of which he was the chief. 

It has been asserted that he was a lover of popularity, and shaped 
his measures to please the people. If the meaning of this charge 
be that he cherished the good will of those in whose service his life 
was spent, such was doubtless the case. To be loved by the people 
among whom our lot is cast, to be revered as a benefactor of our 
race, is indeed a noble ambition; and this ambition Jefferson 
felt in its greatest extent. But if it be alledged that his great 
measures were designed not with large general views but with the 
object of acquiring popularity as a means of rising into power, no 
accusation can be more untrue. He was of all his contemporaries 
the most uncalculating as to the effect of measures upon his own 
personal interests. And this, we should say, was the distinctive 
trait of his character. A reformer is rarely a hunter after pop- 
ular favor. He planned with deliberation his measures, and he 
brought them forth, utterly regardless of consequences. The idol 
of the people, he was, in no sense and at no time, a time-server or 
a self-seeker. The great measures with which he connected him- 
self in early life were almost invariably ahead of public sentiment: 
and, opposed as they were by men who had for years controlled 
public opinion, were more apt to retard than advance the progress 
of a politician. They were calculated to arra} r , and did array, the 
wealth, the talents, and the prejudices political and religious of a 



180 THOMAS JEFFEKSON. 

powerful class and a ruling caste against him. The man who could 
rise in a body composed mainly of tobacco-planters and slave- 
holders who had inherited their estates and who wished to transmit 
them to posterity, and of the friends of the church, and demand an 
instantaneous and unqualified repeal of the laws of primogeniture 
and entails, and the separation of the church from the state, and 
who held in his hand a resolution to abolish slavery, might be 
denounced as a mad-cap or an enthusiast, but could not be regarded 
by any man who heard him state his propositions as a candidate for 
present popularity. A tobacco-planter would not have purchased 
popularity at such a price, even if he had been sure of his bargain. 
The truth is that, so far from catering for public favor by his great 
measures of reform, he may be said, although they became ulti- 
mately popular, never to have entirely recovered from their support. 
They were such as were not likely to be forgotten, and were never 
forgiven. They inflicted a wound which no medicaments could 
heal. They evoked passions which time could not appease, which 
tracked him through life, and which gloated above his grave. It 
was the merit of Jefferson that he pressed his measures, however 
unpopular for a season, in the hope that in the process of time their 
worth would be acknowledged. And it is most honorable to the 
people, as it must have been most grateful to him, that, both at home 
and abroad, their affections followed rather than preceded the 
adoption of his most important schemes of legislation and reform. 
The peculiarities of his mind and character may be traced in his 
style. Its essential merit lies rather in its strength and point than 
in the choice or beauty of its words. Not that he did not fully com- 
prehend the worth of words and the grace of manner; but he 
seems to have regarded language only as a means of accomplishing 
his purpose, and to have written hastily out of a full mind, leaving 
first thoughts to take care of themselves. Hence that freshness 
and raciness which led the reader captive, and drew off* his atten- 
tion from minor defects. His letters partake of this character 
to a considerable extent. In all his writings reason predominates 
over imagination ; and the reader quickly sees that the author 
derived more pleasure from the pursuits of science than from 
those of literature. The same trait may be seen in his criti- 
cisms on books, and would sometimes lead us seriously to ques- 
tion the purity of his taste, if he had not written so much and 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 181 

so well. In one respect he surpassed all his contemporaries : in 
the faculty of throwing a mass of doctrines into a group, and in 
making them the shibboleth of a parly. His first inaugural, 
severely criticized as it was, and in some respects justly amenable 
to criticism, was the most remarkable chart of a party known in 
our annals. It took such a firm hold of the public mind that neither 
the eloquence, the wit, nor the bitter sarcasm of political opponents 
could loosen it. The faculty of putting great truths in a nutshell, 
of compressing whole theories or doctrines into an adage, was so 
conspicuous in his writings that it may be said, when he wrote a 
letter or a paper upon a party topic, the letter or paper became the 
battle-ground of the time. It was the armory from which his 
friends chose their weapons of offence and defence. Its phrases 
became a part of the public mind. If his thoughts recorded in a 
book were not so potential as his lighter essays, it was because they 
were less easily accessible by the mass of the people. Hence the first 
constitution of Virginia withstood for near fifty years his attacks in 
the "Notes;" but when he threw his thoughts into the shape of a 
letter to Kercheval, the fate of that instrument was sealed. The 
phrases of that letter were at once stereotyped in the public voice • 
and it was amusing to observe on the court green and in debate 
how those phrases passed current with men who had never seen or 
heard of the letter, and who believed that they were clothing their 
own thoughts in their own words. If he sought strength rather 
than elegance in his writings, it was from no inability to adopt a 
different style. Scattered freely throughout his works are passages 
of extraordinary grace and of rare excellence. His letter of con- 
dolence with John Adams on the death of his wife is justly praised 
by the grandson of the sage of Quincy for its exquisite beauty of 
thought and diction ; and it is certainly one of the happiest and 
most harmonious compositions in the language. And not less 
beautiful is the letter, the last he ever wrote, to the Washington 
committee, declining to attend the celebration of that Fourth of 
July on which he was to die. It is the appropriate and melodious 
death-song of that wondrous magician who for half a century 
wielded at will the affections of the American people. 

The respective styles of Jefferson and Madison afford a singular 
exemplification of the individual character of each.* As diplo- 

* It is not unworthy of remark that both Jefferson and Madison wrote excel- 



182 JEFFERSON AND MADISON COMPARED. 

matists, neither of them had a rival. The letters of Jefferson to 
Hammond, and of Madison to Erskine, are the best specimens 
which we yet possess in that department of writing. These ex- 
hibit in common perfect self-possession, ample research, great apt- 
ness in disquisition, and vigor and elegance of expression ; but it 
will appear on a closer inspection that Jefferson, though reasoning 
on large general principles, hastens rapidly to his conclusions, 
which he presses upon his antagonist as if they were made ex- 
pressly for the case in hand, and as if his object was to obtain a 
present victory. Madison, whose scope of reasoning is equally 
as wide, is more elaborate in his argumentation, and applies his 
conclusions with equal tact to the case in hand; but in his philoso- 
phical mode of handling the subject, seems to regard his present 
opponent as one member only of that august tribunal present and 
future which was to decide the question. In their inaugural as 
well as in their ordinary messages to Congress the same dis- 
tinction is apparent. Force and point and rapid analysis are the 
characteristics of the style of Jefferson ; full, clear, and deliber- 
ate disquisition carefully wrought out, as if the writer regarded 
himself rather as the representative of truth than the exponent 
of the doctrines of a party or even of a nation, is the praiee of 
Madison. One wrote as a great minister at the head of a bureau, 
under the pressure of business, and thoroughly conversant with 
his subject, might be expected to write. The other wrote with 
full deliberation as if he were laying down the rules and principles 
by which great ministers should be governed. Hence, as before 
observed, every, paper from the pen of Jefferson abounds with ex- 
pressions easily separable from the context, which became the tocsin 
of a party ; while it is difficult to cull from the papers or even the 
speeches of Madison, written on purely party topics, an adage or 
a maxim, or even a pointed phrase, as a weapon to be used in the 
existing contest. Jefferson was so thoroughly steeped in prac- 
tical affairs, that in all his writings he could never let the politician 
drop entirely out of view. Madison, though viewing politics as 

lent hands. It is said that the leading actors in the drama of the French Rev- 
olution wrote hands that were hardly legible — Napoleon writing worst of all. 
On the other hand our great Virginia statesmen excelled in this respect. Pey- 
ton Randolph, Pendleton, Mason, Henry, Read, Carrington, Cabell, Wythe, 
Tazewell, were expert and graceful pensmen. The beauty of Washington's 
hand-writing is proverbial. 



JEFFERSON AND MADISON COMPARED. 183 

steadily in their direct application to business, still regarded them 
as a science, and was indisposed to attempt a conquest by other 
means than those which were legitimate in a discussion of pure 
philosophy. 

Their respective characteristics were evinced in their use of 
words. Madison was probably more critically learned in the dead 
languages than Jefferson; for his early advantages of acquiring 
them were greater, and he nearly sacrificed his life by his devotion 
to letters in his youth ; yet in the course of his life he never dared 
to coin a word. He was so well satisfied with the riches of the 
English language that he found a word or a phrase for any purpose. 
Jefferson, as if disposed to assail the sovereignty of the English 
tongue as well as the sovereignty of the English sword, never hes- 
itated to coin a word when it suited his purposes so to do ; and 
though many of his brood are questionable on the ground of ana- 
logy and as intermixing languages ; yet they were expressive, and 
became familiar. The epithet "pseudo-republican," the product of 
an illegitimate cross, and applied to a celebrated jurist before he 
assumed the gown, is a word of his coinage, and may serve to re- 
mind the political adept of an interesting period in the state of 
parties. 

The time is fast coming, if it has not already come, among the 
nations of Europe as well as in his own land, when the name of 
Jefferson will be indisputably the first on the civic roll of America. 
Indications clear and abundant show that the finest minds of the 
age, men who view history in the spirit of philosophy, are beginning 
to assign him his station as the architect of American liberty. 
Time, and distance which is but another phase of time, can alone 
develope the true proportions of a great reformer. The mists of 
prejudice and faction, of party and personal feeling, which darken 
the vision of his contemporaries, must be allowed to dissolve. We 
are old enough to remember when an allusion to the color of his 
breeches would excite a laugh ; and within a quarter of a century 
past, and within less than four years after his body had been com- 
mitted to the grave, one of his bitterest opponents sought to move the 
mirth of a grave assembly by casting ridicule on a plough invented 
by the author of the declaration of independence. He lived at a 
time of extraordinary excitement, when passion passed from poli- 
tics to persons, and when the courtesies of life were rarely ex- 



184 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

changed between the contending parties. Most of those opponents 
have departed ; but their prejudices yet survive in some of their 
descendants. Another generation will brush them all away. The 
publication of his writings has contributed wonderfully to his 
fame abroad. Here, where a generation has not passed since his 
death, we may expect that some harsh comments which they may 
contain on the conduct of relatives and associates, and on measures 
which have been connected with the names of honored friends, 
will in certain quarters produce a sensation ; but abroad no such 
feelings exist. Rarely have the records of a human life reaching 
beyond eighty years presented such a monument of industry, of 
intelligence, of consistent and devoted purpose, of patriotism pure 
and fearless, and of a rare and far-reaching philanthropy. Even 
his " Ana," which have been severely judged here, will be pro- 
nounced invaluable memorials of his times, and serve with the 
diaries of Reresby and Luttrell, of the younger Clarendon and the 
younger Sidney, of Pepys and Evelyn, to let us in behind the 
scenes of outward history. It is immaterial whether those records 
in all their minute details be true or false ; it is enough for the 
purposes of history to know that they were believed to be true, 
and were deliberately recorded and acted upon by the statesman 
who was the master-spirit of the time.* They tend to illustrate 
the greatest transition-period in modern history, and, apart from 
the particular facts which they disclose, possess an inestimable 
value. We would not erase a single line, we would not blot a sin- 
gle word, from his writings which have come down to us. As 
Christians, we may deeply deplore for his sake the fact, that his 
name cannot be ranked with the names of Locke and Newton and 
Pascal, and of your own Boyle, t as the name of a believer in the 
divinity of our Saviour, and that in a religious view we must place 
him in the same class with Franklin, Governeur Morris, Allen, 
the Adamses, Story, and other prominent men of his era. But the 
very freedom with which he discloses his views is honorable to 

* Of course, I am pleased when any descendant of the actors of those days 
can remove any imputation cast upon his ancestors ; but with all such ex- 
planations the value of the Ana is not impaired. The belief of Jefferson in 
their truth is the ground of their worth. What would we give for the Ana 
of Hampden or Cromwell, and how would they have been received after the 
Restoration, or even in the time of the Georges ? 

t Robert Boyle was a great benefactor of William and Mary. His portrait, 
presented by his brother still adorns the blue-room. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 185 

him. He had no concealments from those who sought his opinions 
in the ordinary forms of social intercourse. The utter absence of 
all hypocrisy in his writings is a merit of the highest order. The 
disciples of Talleyrand may sneer at his indiscretion, and may 
repeat the proverb of their miserable master ; but we may rejoice 
that Jefferson had higher views of language than as a means 

D Do 

of concealing his thoughts from his fellow-men. We see him and 
we know him as he was. But, aside from his collected writings 
which posterity will cherish as if:s most precious legacy bequeathed 
by the primeval age of the republic, his titles to the kind remem- 
brance and veneration of future times are beyond number. Indeed, 
if any man were more fortunate than another in interweaving his 
name with the affections of his race, Jefferson is that man. If we 
cast our eyes over the Commonwealth, we behold everywhere his 
handy-work. The traveller as he approaches the Metropolis of 
the State sees eminent above every other building our majestic 
Capitol, and instantly calls to mind that the beautiful representa- 
tion before him of the modern capitol of Scamozzi traced by the 
genius of Clerissault was the design of Jefferson. This ancient 
city is full of associations connected with his history. As the in- 
telligent stranger enters this College, and recalls the many dis- 
tinguished men whose youthful footsteps pressed its floors, the 
name of your most illustrious son is the first that rises to his lips. 
Here he spent his early hours ; here he gave back the shouts of 
laughter among his fellows ; here he disciplined his fine genius ; 
and hence he sallied forth to engage in the business of life ; and 
subsequently, when he was invested with the first honors of the 
State, he again appeared within your walls, and devised certain 
amendments of your polity which still exist in your statute-book. 
It was in the domestic circles of this city and in its ancient palace 
that he formed his manners, and acquired that social grace which, 
even in his latest days, was the charm of all who approached him. 
It was in the Capitol in this city that he heard while a student the 
eloquence of Henry, and became instinct with that love of coun- 
try which inspired him through life, and which produced its rich 
fruits, when, as a member of the House of Burgesses, he wrote 
some of the ablest state-papers in our records. The elegant 
mansion and the humble cottage, dotting in thick profusion the 
hills and dales of this broad land, alike speak his praise. It was 



186 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

his work that the colossal fabric of primogeniture and entails was 
demolished, and property made free. It is his work that the 
sons and the daughters of common parents enjoy the common 
patrimony. Inequality of wealth will indeed exist as long as some 
men spend more than they earn and others earn more than they 
spend ; for such an effect is of the essence of freedom ; but no 
human law prevents the division of estates. When Jefferson 
struck at the laws of primogeniture and entails, the property of 
the country was mainly in the hands of a few, and every precau- 
tion the wit of man could devise for its perpetuation in the same 
families was carefully adopted. But such has been the effect of 
his policy, that at this day, while there are not more than twenty 
men in the State who would be deemed rich on the London Exchange 
or in Wall Street, there are tens of thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands of thrifty proprietors, who on their native soil and in the shadow 
of their own vine are enjoying the blessings of plenty and peace. 
Now every youth starts fair in the race of wealth and fame. This is 
the praise of Jefferson. Every temple, however humble or stately, 
reared to religion, is a remembrancer of his fame. If one passion 
were stronger than another in English bosoms, it was a love of the 
established church. The love of royalty was a strong passion ; 
but the love of the church was stronger than the love of royalty. 
It was Jefferson who year after year sapped the foundations of 
this sacred monopoly until it toppled to its downfall. And, as if 
there was permanency in all his deeds, while not a shred of the 
constitution drawn by George Mason exists in our present form of 
government, the preamble from the pen of Jefferson still holds its 
place in the existing constitution and in the affections of the peo- 
ple. In all these measures he may be said to have appealed to the 
people as a whole, to the old and the young, to the wise and the 
simple. But in the establishment of the University of Virginia 
he may be said to have rested his appeal in the bosoms of the 
young alone. That noble institution was the child of his old age. 
One of the most touching of all his letters contains the glowing 
prediction of its usefulness which is verifying every hour. His 
marble image, the work of a native sculptor, will ere long adorn 
its halls, and will recall him to the eye of future ages such as he 
was, when surrounded by private embarrassments and under the pres- 
sure of age, he sought to open up in the wilderness that fountain of 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 187 

letters ; but, Ions: after the marble shall have crumbled to dust, the 
affections of youthful genius kindled at that sacred shrine will hal- 
low his name. If we look beyond the Commonwealth, the evidences 
of his fame crowd upon us. The Fourth of July singled out from 
common days by his pen, and consecrated by his death, is his for- 
ever. As long as that day in the endless cycle of ages shall re- 
turn, his fame will be fresh. The currency of the federal govern- 
ment, so simple yet so perfect, is the work of his hands. The 
mill, the cent, the dime, the dollar, the eagle, perpetually proclaim 
the genius of the man who called them into being. The rules 
which he laid down as the guides of federal policy are still held 
in such repute that the worth or want of worth of an administra- 
tion is decided by its adherence to them or by its departure from 
them. It was his doctrine that it was cheaper and more honora- 
ble to acquire territory by the purse than to seize it with the sword ; 
and the original territory of Louisiana, added to the Union with- 
out the tears of the vanquished or the wail of the widow, without 
the loss of a single life or the shedding of a drop of blood, will be 
a memorial of his worth as long as its fertile fields produce their 
harvests, and its noble rivers bear those harvests to the sea. When 
we look at the unnumbered and important topics associated with 
his name, all of which are intimately connected with the progress 
of the human race, when we contemplate the vast extent of our 
country which will in due time be settled by a dense population, the 
increasing facilities [of intercourse among nations, the power of 
the press the capacities of which for the diffusion of knowledge, 
great as they now are, are but in the process of development, and 
the expansive tendencies of our institutions, and turn our glance 
from the past and the present to the future, may we not conclude 
that, though a century has passed since the birth of Jefferson — a 
century the chronicles of which are resplendent with his deeds — 
his fame is as yet only in its early dawn ?* 

* The sources of information concerning Jefferson are abundant. I need 
only specify his memoir of himself and his writings generally, the excellent 
Life of Jefferson by Professor Tucker and the Eulogies of Wirt and Webster. 
I wish I could speak of the truthfulness of the sketch in the work called Party 
Leaders in as warm terms as I can of the ability and eloquence with which it 
is written. Mr. Baldwin lias brought out in bold relief some fine traits of Jef- 
ferson, and in a way that could hardly have been expected from an opponent; 
but the general view which he takes is that which could only be taken by a 
disciple of Alexander Hamilton or of Timothy Pickering. 

On the subject of the constitutionality of acquiring Louisiana, about which 



188 THOMAS NELSON. 

To pass over a single honored name of the Convention is a sub- 
ject of regret ; but we have far exceeded our limits, and we must 
touch lightly even the noble name of Thomas Nelson, who, edu- 
cated at this College and at the University of Cambridge, England, 
had served in the House of Burgesses and in the Council, who was 
a member of all the Conventions including the present, in which, 
however, he did not keep his seat, having been deputed to Congress 
in which body he signed the Declaration of Independence, being the 
fifth member of the Convention whose name is attached to that 
instrument;* who succeeded Jefferson as governor of the Common- 
wealth at a perilous crisis, and whose gallant services in the field 
with his purse as well as with his sword entitle him to the gratitude 
and admiration of his country; of George Gilmer, the alternate of 
Jefferson and his intimate friend, whose classic memory yet sheds 
a radiance over his beloved Albemarle;! and of his colleague 
Charles Lewis; of Benjamin Watkins of Chesterfield, the col- 
league of Archibald Cary, whose name, revived in his illustrious 
grandson, has become the talisman of honor, of genius, of eloquence, 
and of a glowing patriotism; of William Fleming of Cumberland, 
a son of William and Mary, who was a member of the House of 

Mr. Jefferson doubted in the first instance, I would refer the reader to the 
argument of Mr. Tazewell in a report on the Colonization Society made in the 
Senate of the United States in 1828, which is the ablest exposition of the 
right extant. 

The name of Jefferson was among the first settlers. From a memorandum 
made of the proceedings of the first House of Burgesses existing only in man- 
uscript in the British State Paper Office by Conway Robinson, Esq. it appears 
that a Jefferson was one of the Burgesses. The Madisons, it appears from the 
same source, had come over to the colony before 1623. 

* The members of the Virginia Convention of 1776, who were also members 
of Congress, and who signed the Declaration of Independence, were Wythe, R 
H. Lee, Harrison, Jefferson, and Nelson. The life of Nelson was shortened by 
exposure and care in the public service. He died at his seat in Hanover on the 
fourth of January, 1789, in his fiftieth year. The eloquent Innis has commem- 
orated the death of his friend by a striking eulogium beginning: "The illus- 
trious General Nelson is no more ;" and ending with the lines from Shakspeare : 

" His life was gentle ; and the elements 

So mixed in him, that nature might stand up 

And say to all the world — this was a Man." 

A sketch of his life, not free from some inaccuracies, may be found in Sander- 
son's "Lives of the Signers." (VII, 265.) See also Campbell's History page 
154, where it is said a beautiful portrait of Nelson taken when he was a youth 
by Chainberlin in London is now at Shelby in Gloucester, the seat of his daughter 
Mrs. Mann Page. 

t For many interesting particulars concerning Dr. Gilmer see Kennedy's Life 
of Wirt, and Gilmer's Georgia Letters. 



GENEKAL VIEW OF THE MEMBERS. 189 

Burgesses and of the Conventions, a member of the committee on 
independence, a judge of the General Court and a judge of the 
Court of Appeals;* of Meriwether Smith of Essex, long a member 
of the House of Burgesses, a member of all the Conventions, a 
member of the Declaration Committee, and a member of the Vir- 
ginia Federal Convention; of Joseph Jones of King George, long 
a member of the House of Burgesses, a member of all the Conven- 
tions, a member of the Declaration committee, a member of Congress, 
and a judge of the General Court; of William Roscow Wilson 
Curle, of the borough of Norfolk, a member of the House of Bur- 
gesses, and a judge of Admiralty and of the first Court of Appeals; 
of James Mercer of Hampshire, a student of William and Mary, 
a member of the House of Burgesses, a member of all the Conven- 
tions, a member of the Declaration committee, a member of Con- 
gress, and a judge of Admiralty and of the first Court of Appeals: 
of Richard Cary of Warwick, a student of William and Mary, 
long a member of the House of Burgesses, a member of the Decla- 
ration committee, a judge of the General Court, and a member of 
the Virginia Federal Convention; of Simpson and Smith of Acco- 
mac ; of Tabb and Winn of Amelia; of Richard Lee and John A. 
Washington of Westmoreland; of Dudley Digges and William 
Digges of York ; of Watts and Booker of Prince Edward ; of 
Poythress of Prince George ; of Mayo of Cumberland; of Bul- 
litt and Henry Lee of Prince William;! of Cocke and Faulcon 
of Surry; of Robinson and Thoroughgood of Princess Anne; of 
Page and Thornton of Spottsylvania; of Brent of Stafford ; or 
Mason of Sussex ; of the Harwoods of Charles City and War_ 
wick; of Gray and Taylor of Southampton; of James Taylor of 
Caroline ; of Talbot and Lynch of Bedford ; of Kenner and Cralle 
of Northumberland ; of Bowyer and Lockhart of Botetourt ; of 
Acrill of Charles City ; of Field and Strother of Culpeper; of 

* The late Daniel Call once said to a friend : Roane may give you more rea- 
sons for his opinions, but Fleming is more apt to be right. 

f The reader will not confound Henry Lee of Prince William with Richard Hen-- 
ry Lee or any of his brothers, or with Henry Lee of the Legion. He was an old 
member of the House of Burgesses, a member of all the Conventions and of the 
Declaration committee, and was a member of the General Assembly. His stand- 
ing was of the first before and after the Revolution. It was to Joseph Jones ot 
King George to whom as a member of Congress, George Mason addressed hig 
able letter on the Virginia and Pennsylvania land dispute in 1780, which 
may be seen in the Bland papers, Appendix, 124. 



190 GENERAL VIEW OF THE MEMBERS. 

Banister* and Starke of Dinwiddie ; of Wilson Miles Cary and 
Henry King of Elizabeth City; of Scott of Fauquier, a name which 
has held an honorable place in the Conventions of Virginia to this 
day; of Speed of Mecklenburg and of his colleague Goode, a name 
also known in all the early and in the subsequent Conventions; of 
Wilkinson and Adams of Henrico; of Holt and Newton of Norfolk: 
of Riddick and Cowper of Nansemond ; of Wills and Fulgham of 
Isle of Wight; of Terry and Watkins of Halifax; of Garland of 
Lunenburg; of Meriwether and Johnson of Louisa; of Aylett 
of King William ; of Woodson and Thomas Mann Randolph of 
Goochland; of Selden and Gordon of Lancaster; of Peyton of 
Loudoun ; of Berkeley and Montague of Middlesex; of Nathan- 
iel Lyttleton Savage and George Savage of Northampton; and 
of others, who, as students of William and Mary, as members of 
the House of Burgesses, and of all the deliberative bodies of the 
Revolution, and as ardent patriots, deserve our favorable regard.! 

But it is time that the Convention adjourn. Its work was done 
and well done. That parting scene might well touch the sensibili- 
ties of the sternest heart. Some strong passions had been roused 
at several stages of its proceedings; and though the votes on the 
prominent questions were apparently unanimous, there w r ere some 
serious struggles in adjusting details, and the line of division between 
the two great parties was more than once sharply drawn.} As is 
usual at the close of a session, the rules of order were slightly re- 
laxed. A group of members might have been seen examining the 
ingenious device of the public seal which a few moments before had 
been reported by Mason and unanimously adopted by the House ; 
and others were at the table of the Clerk inspecting the enrolled 

* There is no living male descendant of Col. Banister that I am aware of. He 
was educated in England, and studied law at the Temple, was a member of all 
the early Conventions, a colonel in the Virginia line, and a member of Congress. 
A small stream in Halifax bears his name. He died in 1787 and is buried in 
Dinwiddie county near Hatcher's Run. There is a miniature likeness of him 
at Osmore in the county of Amelia. For his letters and other particulars re- 
specting him see the Bland papers collected by Charles Campbell, to which I 
am indebted for these details. 

f The general catalogue of William and Mary, recently published by the 
faculty, is an interesting document; but, while it contains the names of some of 
the members of the Convention who were students of the College, it omits 
others. It is valuable as it is, and will be doubtless amended in the next 
edition. 

% See Letter of George Mason of May 18, 1776 in the archives of the Histor- 
ical Society. 



CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION". 191 

bill of the constitution ; but, when the motion to adjourn was made, 
the members hastened to ther seats. When the motion was carried, 
Pendleton rose slowly from the chair to announce the result. He 
evidently felt the solemnity of the scene. His handsome face, the 
serenity of which the fiercest storm of debate could not ruffle, re- 
flected the unwonted feelings which agitated his bosom ; and when 
the clear tones of that silver voice fell on the ears of the members 
now for the last time,, feelings too deep for utterance were excited in 
every bosom. Yet his self-command was such, no emotion save in 
the tremulous fullness of his voice appeared in his manner. He 
spoke deliberately and wisely as became the organ of such a bod} 7 . 
He said in substance, " that the labors of the Convention were 
ended. Independence had been declared, and a form of govern- 
ment had been adopted ; and from urgent necessity the Convention 
had devised certain measures for the public safety. He called upon 
the members to keep in mind that independence was 3'et to be 
maintained in the field, and that the administration of the new gov- 
ernment required the constant and cordial aid of the people. He 
felt that his associates w 7 ould act their part with honor, and would 
spend their treasure and their blood freely in the common cause ; 
and would animate the people by their example. A war with a 
powerful nation might justly be deemed formidable even to a na- 
tion long established and well provided with the means of defence. 
But their case was peculiar. They were engaged in a struggle of 
life and death under circumstances of great embarrassment. They 
were in the midst of a civil war. The hand of a brother might be 
raised against a brother; the nearest and dearest ties of blood and 
friendship must be sundered. If they were unsuccessful, their es- 
tates would be confiscated, their families would be reduced to want, 
and the scaffold might be their own fate. But their blood would not 
be spilt in vain. Their cause was just. Liberty was their birthright, 
and life without liberty had no value in their eyes. The contest 
was no choice of theirs. They had been driven to the sword. They 
had committed their cause to the God of Battles; and should it be 
His will, as he hoped and believed that it would be, to give success 
to their anus, what a glorious triumph awaited them? They would 
enjoy the blessings of liberty and peace, and their children and 
their children's children would rise up and call them blessed. He 
returned his sincere thanks to the members for their kind appreciation 



192 CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION. 

of his services in the chair, and he bade them — one and all — an affec- 
tionate farewell." Thus closed the sessions of the Virginia Con- 
vention of 1776, the deliberations of which led directly to the es- 
tablishment of American Independence, and will be felt in human 
affairs as long as the language in which they are recorded shall 
endure. 



CONCLUSION. 



Now, Mr. President, we have heard the history of some of these 
worthy men under whose guidance our beloved Virginia cast aside 
her colonial bonds, and assumed a position among the nations of 
the earth. Should I seem to have dwelt too long on their personal 
history, it must be remembered that the praise of but few of them 
is to be found in print, and that the rise, progress, and consumma- 
tion of the Revolution are most intimately connected with the 
individual character and personal influence of the men who were 
engaged in it. Of them it may be strictly said, that they were 
men, not whom the Revolution made, but who made the Revolu- 
tion. From the impulse of gain or ambition no prudent man of 
that era would have incurred the risks of a radical change. Ulti- 
mate defeat was probable ; and an immense loss of life and property 
was inevitable. Nought but the defence of a great principle would 
have impelled our fathers to make a stand on such an occasion ; 
and, as we have reaped the rewards of their sacrifices, we nat- 
urally seek to know the domestic life of our benefactors. Let 
us make the story of their lives the first leusons of the young as 
well as the study of the old. Let us make their faces and their 
forms familiar to the public eye. Let the chisel of the sculptor 
strike from the rock their august images for the illustration of the 
Capitol. Let the brush of the artist portray their features for the 
adornment of our homes, of our colleges, and of our historical 
halls. Let the daguerreotype reflect from the walls of the 
humblest cottage of a Virginia farmer the faces of the Fathers of 
the Republic. For never did a people owe more to their ancestors 
than we do to ours. A more magnificient heritage no people ever 

shared, or ever descended from a purer source. It is to the mem- 
13 



194 CONCLUSION. 

bers of the Virginia Convention of 1776 that we are indebted for 
the independence of Virginia. It was their mandate to our dele- 
gates in Congress that called into being the resolution, drawn by- 
one of its members, which pronounced the United Colonies free 
and independent. It was in pursuance with that resolution, that the 
Declaration of Independence of the Fourth of July, drawn by another 
of its members, was promulgated to the world. It is to their provident 
forecast that the fundamental and inalienable rights of man are 
recorded in a form within the reach of the humblest citizen — a 
form so succinct as to have been adopted by other states and to 
become the common birthright of the American people. To them 
belongs the honor of having presented to the world the first model 
of a written constitution of a free commonwealth. These venerable 
patriots, to whom we owe so much, have all passed away. The last, 
not the least of them all, was gathered to his fathers amid the shades 
of Montpelier nineteen years ago. The wave of time has now fairly 
settled above them all. Let it be our pride to cherish their memory. 
Let us teach our youth to repeat their names, to recount their deeds, 
and to imitate their virtues. But let us not forget that, though they 
have passed away, our beloved Virginia is immortal. She still 
lives in the freshness of life and in the prime of her exceeding loveli- 
ness. Time has written no wrinkle on her majestic brow. Not a 
leaf of the laurels with which two centuries have bedecked her 
has withered or been plucked away. The Atlantic marks her 
empire in the east, and the gentle waves of the Ohio wash he r 
northwestern limit; but her territory no longer leans on the Mis- 
sissippi. A noble state, created by her act, and carved out of 
her lands, once known as the Bloody Ground, now as Kentucky 
forms her western boundary. Her laws organic and statute she 
may alter or amend as the interests and feelings, or even the 
caprices, of her children, may require; for since the date of the 
Convention a white population exceeding that then or now residing 
in the East, strong in its love of liberty as in its numbers, and de- 
voted to her rule, has sprung into existence beyond those mountains 
which were then the almost extreme boundaries of the Anglo-Saxon 
race on the American continent. Railways and canals have pene. 
trated the interior, and united her children by ties which may never 
be sundered. This College, over which in its infancy she extended 
her fostering hand, still survives to bless new generations, and hails 



CONCLUSION. 195 

v/ith the affection of a sister those kindred institutions which are 
lighting the mountain and the plain in one general blaze of civiliza- 
tion and knowledge. Her ancient church, the object of her early 
care, resting no longer on the infidel arm of the secular power, but 
on the arm of her Divine Master, and reposing on the general 
affection, flourishes fairer and purer and lovelier than ever. Nor are 
her temples the only temples on which a Christian patriot delights to 
dwell. A thousand spires reared by the willing hands of Christian 
men, controlled not by the law of the land but by the law of love, 
proclaim the great truth that religion is free, and that God is wor- 
shipped in spirit and in truth. Well may our blessed mother con- 
template with joy her colleges and her churches ; for she knows 
full well that knowledge and religion are the noblest and best 
defence of a Commonwealth. Behold our beloved mother! How 
beautiful she seems ! Pure as she is beautiful, good as she is great! 
You hear no word of repining, no voice of censure or of envy, from 
her taintless lips. She looks abroad over the Commonwealth. She 
knows no East, no West, no North, no South. She regards with 
equal affection all her children. She asks not in what distant 
clime any of them may have been born — enough for her to know 
that they cherish her prosperity, and have their homes beneath her 
wings. Now, as ever, she delights in the beauty and piety of her 
daughters and in the wisdom and valor of her sons ; and many a 
precious name has she garnered beside those of her Clark, her 
Henry, and her Washington. And shall we not requite her devoted 
affection? Shall we not cling, aye, forever cling to that soil which 
our mighty fathers trod, and beneath which they are laid to rest ? 
Shall we not sustain with our latest pulse her spotless banner? 
Shall we not seek in our day to diffuse that brotherly love, that 
generous civilization, that love of liberty and that light of letters, 
which she prizes so well ? Shall we not seek by a mild and wise 
policy to undermine the loathsome jail and the fearful penitentiary, 
and rear on their reeking ruins the school-house, the college, and 
the church? Shall we not seek by physical means as well as 
moral, by the railway and the canal as well as by the school-house 
and the church, to connect in pleasant communion all the parts of 
our territory, all the children of one family ? Thus shall we earn 
a title to be remembered, when our ashes shall have mingled with 
the ancestral mould, by the sons and daughters of Virginia who 



196 CONCLUSION. 

may henceforth assemble in this hall to dwell upon the past, and to 
invoke upon future generations the untold blessings which we now 
enjoy. 

In conclusion, let me express the pleasure which I have enjoyed 
in revisiting after a long lapse of years your ancient institution. 
When in the distance I beheld the rays of the sun glancing from 
her hoary roof, all her precious associations crowded upon me. Her 
position in this rural and peaceful city, once the metropolis of the 
Colony and of the Commonwealth, and ever the abode of high cour- 
tesy and honor, where the Muses have loved so long to dwell ;* 
her structure still stately and sound with a century of years chron- 
icled on its front — transported me into the past, and I seemed to see 
the incidents of her busy life rise in quick succession before me. I 
could share the exultation of your pious Founder as he saw rising 
day by day an edifice from which a band of educated youth would 
o-o forth to teach the savage, and to diffuse in the New World the 
benefits of knowledge and religion. The names of his successors 
in the presidency, the Dawsons, Stith, Yates, Horrox, Camm, Mad- 
ison, Smith, Wilmer, Dew, who devoted their lives to the cause of 
literature and science, and who trained many a noble youth for the 
service of his country, rush upon my recollection. I can trace the 
youthful Washington as he passes your portal, with his warrant of 
Surveyor in his possession,! ready to enter the wilderness in pur- 
suit of fortune, to that later day when, with all his honors fresh 
upon him, the successor of the Bishop of London as Chancellor of 
the College, he led your annual convocations. I see, too, pass 
from your Board of Examiners which met in this building, bearing 
their warrants of Surveyor with them, William Mayo, just arrived 
from his home in the Antilles, and destined to run that line which 
still marks the boundary of two sovereign States ; Thomas Lewis, 

* By the seventeenth section of the charter of William and Mary granted in 
1692, it is declared that the lands of the College shall be held by the trustees 
by fealty, in tree and common socage, they paying to the king and his succes- 
sors two copies of Latin verses yearly, on every filth day of November, at the 
house of the governor or lieutenant governor for the time being, in full dis- 
charge of all quitrents &c. 

-f The office of Surveyor General was conferred on the Faculty of the College 
by the sixteenth section of the charter which enjoins that the professors " shall 
nominate and substitute such and so many particular surveyors for the particular 
counties of our Colony of Virginia, as our governor in chief, and the council of 
our said Colony, shall' think fit and necessary ;" for which service they were to 
receive " the profits and appurtenances of the office," which were already es- 
tablished by law. 



CONCLUSION. 197 

the first surveyor of Augusta, and Thomas Read, the first surveyor 
of the patriotic county in which I reside, whose services and sacri- 
fices on the altar of their country I have dwelt upon elsewhere ; 
and Zachary Taylor, the father of that heroic man who inscribed 
the names of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and Buena 
Vista by the side of those of Princeton, Trenton and York. I can 
see Wythe and Small in earnest conversation as they leave your 
lecture-room, accompanied by that tall red-haired boy whom with 
prophetic sagacity they had singled out among his fellows as their 
compter and friend, and who, while they were yet living, was to 
preside in the government of a nation which had received its bap- 
tism at his hands. I see that generous band of students who at the 
beginning of the Revolution hurriedly cast aside the gown, and 
sallied forth to fight the battles of the United Colonies. The Boi- 
lings, the Burwells, the Byrds, the Carters, the Cockes, the Clai- 
bornes, the Dades, the Digges', the Egglestons, the Harrisons, the 
Lyons', the Mercers, the Monroes, the Nelsons, the Pages, the 
Randolphs', and the Saunders', appear before me almost with the 
distinctness of real life. And when the struggle was past, I see 
two tall and gallant youths, who had been classmates in early youth, 
and whose valor had shone on many a field, enter their names on 
your lists, and after an abode beneath your roof depart once more to 
serve their country in the senate and in the most celebrated courts 
of Europe, crowning their public career by filling, one of them the 
Chief Magistracy of the Union, the other the highest office of the 
Federal Judiciary. I see another tall and graceful youth, who, I 
rejoice to say, is still living — and long may he live the bulwark of 
his own and the admiration of other lands — as he leaves this build- 
ing on his errand of patriotism, and I can almost hear the shouts of 
his successors in this hall as in due time he connected with your 
history and with the history of the age the magic words of Chippewa 
and Lundy's Lane, and I hear those shouts redoubled as the names 
of Vera Cruz, the King's Bridge, Cerro Gordo, Cherubusco, Molino 
del Rey, Chapultepec and the city of Mexico are borne to them in 
close array on the wings of the Southern breeze. I see a host of 
young men departing from you year after year, some of whom are 
now among the brightest ornaments of their country, and who have 
shed a new lustre on the name of William and Mary. I ascend 
your stairway worn by the tread of a century, and another pano- 



198 CONCLUSION. 

rama is unrolled to the eye. I enter your Blue Room, the scene of 
your early convocations, and inspect with surpassing: interest your 
charter filling a score of sheets of parchment with its details, and 
the books of your ancient records; and I gaze with unutterable emo- 
tions on the portraits which depend from its cornice. The image 
of your Founder, side by side with that of his duteous wife, who 
shared with him his early hardships and who sustained him stag- 
gering beneath the weight of those responsibilities civil as well as 
religious which for near two-thirds of a century devolved upon him, 
there finds its fitting habitation. The face of the philosophic Boyle, 
drawn by no common hand and yet untouched by time, one of your 
earliest and most liberal benefactors, who, undazzled by a fame 
which filled the ear of Europe, sought by the assistance of your 
predecessors to bring the untutored Indian within the pale of Chris- 
tianity and letters, and whose name is inseparably connected with 
your College, still beams with all that mild beneficence which so 
tenderly appealed to the hearts of our fathers. There the face of 
the lamented Dew, the friend of other days, justly your pride and 
the pride of his country, while we weep to think that his ashes are 
far away on the banks of the Seine, greets us with his wonted 
smile in the heart of his home and in the home of his heart. I enter 
your library and the collective wisdom of centuries look down upon 
me from its shelves. I open with reverence your magnificent edi- 
tion of Chrysostom, and I read on its frontispiece in his own hand- 
writing that it was presented to our fathers more than a century ago 
by the first peer of the British realm — a gift so fit for an Archbishop 
of Canterbury to bestow and for our fathers to receive. I open 
another magnificent volume, and the arms of Louis the Sixteenth, 
who gave us the aid of his fleets and armies in the war of indepen- 
dence, proclaim its story. The names of Blair, Spotswood, Din- 
widdie, Fauquier, Botetourt, are seen everywhere in those votive 
books. Guard, Mr. President, guard with more than vestal care 
those sacred memorials which connect your institution so intimately 
and so honorably with the good and the great of past ages. Let 
no profane hand touch them. Let no impious innovator re- 
move them from the spot where our honored fathers in the 
fulness of their hearts delighted to place them. But it is not 
the symbols of departed genius alone that touch me. There 
is one spectacle in this College more grateful still. In your Faculty 



CONCLUSION. 199 

I behold men worthy to wear the mantles of their illustrious prede- 
cessors, and, above all, do I behold a large number of generous 
young men, filling the rooms which their fathers filled before them, 
and ready to go forth, like their fathers, in the fulfilment of those 
duties which Virginia exacts from her educated sons, and to earn 
new trophies to be placed at her feet. These are cheering signs 
and fill the heart of the patriot with joy. Go on, sir, with your ac- 
complished associates, in the course which you have so handsomely 
begun, and the aspirations of the pious, the patriotic, and the learned 
will hallow your path. 



NOTE. 



It may be said that many of the members of the Convention of 1776 attained 
a good old age. Madison outlived all his associates in that body, having sur- 
vived the adjournment sixty years, and dying on the 28th of June, 1836, aged 
85 years, three months and fourteen days ; and Paul Carrington died on the 
21st of June, 1818 aged 85 years, three months, and twenty-five days, thus at- 
taining a greater age than Madison by eleven days. Carrington died of a diar- 
rhoea which he neglected too long. Jefferson died on the fourth of July 1826, 
aged 83 years, three months and three days. Pendleton died in his 83rd year, 
and Wythe by poison on the eighth of June 1806, aged 80. Col. Thomas Lewis 
died of a cancer in his face in his 72d year, and Col. Thomas Read of an affec- 
tion of the bladder in his 76th year. Col. Arthur Campbell died in Knox 
county, Kentucky, of a cancer on the face in his 74th year. George Mason 
died on the seventh of October, 1792, aged 66. Col. Richard Bland died in 
his 69th year in October 1776 of an apoplectic fit which came upon him while 
walking the streets of Williamsburg. I ought to have stated in the notice of 
Bland that he was attending the session of the General Assembly at the time, 
and was chairman of the select committee which reported Mr. Jefferson's cele- 
brated bill " to enable tenants in taille to convey their lands in fee simple." 
He was the first member of the Convention who died, having departed within 
four months after the adjournment. Judge Blair died in Williamsburg on the 
thirty-first of August 1800, aged 69. Col. Archibald Cary died at Ampthill 
in 1786 between 60 and 70, and Col. Nicholas at his seat in Hanover where he 
was spending the summer in 1780 in or near his 65th year. The date of the 
birth of Cary and Nicholas I have sought in vain, and it is probable that I have 
made Nicholas older than he was. Benjamin Watkins died about 1780, it ia 
believed, between 60 and 70. Patrick Henry died on the sixth of June, 1799, 
aged 63 years and ten days, of a disease of the bladder which modern science 
might probably have relieved. Richard Henry Lee died in his sixty-second 
year. His brother Thomas Ludwell, a member of the Convention from the 
county of Stafford, and one of the Revisors, died in his 47th year. Judge 
Tazewell died in Philadelphia in 1799 in his forty-sixth year. James Mercer 
died in 1793 beyond middle life. Thomas Nelson died in 1789, aged 50. W. 
R. Wilson Curie died before the close of the war somewhat beyond middle age. 
Merriwether Smith, and Henry Lee of Prince William (not Legion Harry) 



202 NOTE. 

died at an age considerably advanced. Edmund Randolph died on the twelfth 
of September 1813 in the county of Frederic, now Page, aged 60 years, one 
month and three days. He was stricken with palsy, the disease of his race, 
his son having been stricken with the same disease in the life-time of his father. 
Peyton Randolph, the president of the Convention until July 1775, also died of 
palsy in his 52nd year, '•' having been seized while dining at Mr. Harry Hall's 
in Philadelphia, and dying before nine the same night." (Washington's Writ- 
ings Vol. Ill, 140, note.) The father of Peyton died in his 44th year, and 
the brother of Peyton, John, the Atorney General, died in England about his 
56th year as near as I can determine. 

In another place I have alluded to the lofty stature of the members of the 
early Conventions. Washington who was a member of the Conventions of 
August 1774 and of March 1775, the Lewises, the Randolphs, George Mason, 
Pendleton, the Cabells, the Carringtons, Henry, Bland, the Lees, Jefferson, the 
Campbells, Blair, Tazewell, were nearly all fully six feet, and some of them 
above that mark. Wythe and Madison were small ; although Mr. Jefferson 
represents Wythe as of middle size in early manhood. He appeared small in 
old age. Madison was probably the only very small man in the Convention of 
1776. Of a later date, Marshall and Monroe were tall. Innis was probably the 
largest man in the Union. The Conqueror of Mexico overtops his fellow-mor- 
tals in stature as well as in military fame. It was for a long time believed in 
England that the Virginians approached the gigantic. When a British offi- 
cer who was taken by Manning at Eutaw, reached England, he reported that 
he was seized by "a huge Virginian." Manning, however, as I was told by 
one who knew him, was rather below than above the middle stature. 

Red hair was another peculiarity of the Virginians. One who saw the 
Virginia troops pass through Petersburg on their way to join the army of 
Greene, told my informant that two-thirds of the officers had red hair. Jef- 
ferson, Campbell, the hero of King's Mountain, Arthur Campbell, John Taylor 
of Caroline, many of the valiant race of Green, had red hair. It would seem 
that the red hair flamed more in the field than in the cabinet. The hair 
of Patrick Henry was sandy I am inclined to think, although no member of 
his family could remember its color, as he was bald in early life, wearing a wig 
abroad and a linen cap at home. George Mason in early life was as swarthy and 
had as black eyes and black hair as Charles the Second whom his ancestor sus- 
tained in the bloody field of Worcester. Carrington, I am disposed to believe, 
had sandy hair, approaching to red. 

The following counties are called in honor of members of the Convention 
of 1776 : 

Harrison, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Nelson, Patrick and Henry, (after 
Patrick Henry,) Pendleton, Randolph, (after Edmund,) Russell, Tazewell, and 
/Wood. 

« The following counties bear the names of members of the Convention but 
are called as follows : 

Cabell after the late Judge W. H. Cabell, Campbell after Gen. Wm. Campbell, 
Lewis after Col. Charles Lewis who fell at Point Pleasant, the brother of 



NOTE. 203 

Thomas and Andrew, Mercer after Gen. Hugh Mercer, Page, after Gov. John 
Page, Scott after Gen. Winfield Scott, Lee after Gen. Henry Lee, and Taylor 
after John Taylor of Caroline, or Gen. Robert B. Taylor of Norfolk, or, if I 
remember the debate on the name rightly, after both. Neither Peyton Ran- 
dolph nor Richard Henry Lee have been commemorated in our list of counties. 

In dispatching this last proof to the press, it may be well enough to inform 
the reader that much of this discourse was passed over in the delivery. The 
debatable parts, as the Mecklenburg Declaration, the North Carolina resolution 
of independence, and the peculiar views respecting the Cavalier, were either 
explicitly stated in substance or in full ; but most of the biographical details 
were necessarily omitted. I regret on looking back that I have passed over 
so many names which merit a lasting remembrance. The gallant services of 
Col. Arthur Campbell deserves a deliberate record. His position in the Con- 
vention was most commanding. Col. Christian, who was a member of the 
March and July Conventions of 1775 had retired to lead the expedition against 
the Cherokees, and Col. Campbell was the best.informed man in the body on 
Indian affairs — a subject of the highest importance when it was known that 
the great object of the British Government was to kindle an Indian war on our 
frontiers. Col. Campbell afterwards succeeded Col. Christian in the command 
of the army against the Indians. At the close of the war he removed to Ken- 
tucky, then a part of Virginia, where he spent the remainder of his life. It 
was his son who commanded the right wing of the army under Gen. Scott at 
the battle of Chippewa, where he fell. The names of Gen. William Russell, 
of Gov. Wood, of Samuel McDowell, of Harvie and Simms, of Bowyer and 
Lockart, and of others who came from the Valley and from the Peidmont re- 
gion, merit a fuller notice than I have been able to give them. In many cases 
I knew not who was their representative, to whom I might write ; for books 
afforded very little information respecting any of my subjects ; and the time 
for the delivery of the discourse was rapidly drawing near. A list of the 
members will be found in the Appendix, and I particularly request that the de- 
scendant or representative, or friend of any one of them will consider this notice 
as a letter expressly addressed to him with an earnest solicitation for the details 
of the lives and characters of the members. As this discourse will probably be 
republished with the discourse on the Virginia Convention of 1829-30 al- 
ready delivered, and with the discourse on the Convention of 17S8, which I 
have been requested by the Virginia Historical Society to prepare, it would 
afford me great pleasure to publish as full details of the lives of the members 
as my limits will allow. I would also make the same request of those who 
represent the members of the Convention of 1788. My address from the 
first of November to the first of June is Norfolk, and from the first of June 
to the first of November Charlotte C. H. Va. 

December 12, 1855. — It is due to the reputation of Pendleton, Henry, and 
Nelson, to state a fact which I accidentally discovered some days ago in the 
Virginia Gazette of Nov. 2, 1803. It is there reported that Edmund Randolph 
in his address at the funeral of Pendleton stated that the resolution instructing 



204 



NOTE. 



our Delegates in Congress to declare independence was drawn by Pendleton, 
was offered in Convention by Nelson, and was advocated on the floor by Henry. 
In a note on page 68, John Nicholas is inadvertently stated to have repre- 
sented New York in Congress. He did not re-enter Congress after leaving 
Virginia. 



APPENDIX. 



A list of the members of the Convention of Virginia which begun its sessions in the 
City of Williamsburg on Monday the sixth of May, 1776, as copied from the 
Journal : 

Accomac, Southey Simpson and Isaac Smith, Esquires. 

Albemarle, Charles Lewis Esquire, and George Gilmer for Thomas Jefferson, 

Esquire. 
Amelia, John Tabb and John Winn, Esquires. 
Augusta, Thomas Lewis and Samuel McDowell, Esquires. 
West Augusta, John Harvie and Charles Simms, Esquires. 
Amherst, William Cabell and Gabriel Penn, Esquires. 
Bedford, John Talbot and Charles Lynch, Esquires. 
Botetourt, John Bowyer and Patrick Lockhart, Esquires. 
Brunswick, Frederic Maclin and Henry Tazewell, Esquires. 
Buckingham, Charles Patteson and John Cabell, Esquires. 
Berkeley, Robert Rutherford and William Drew, Esquires. 
Caroline, the Hon. Edmund Pendleton and James Taylor, Esquires. 
Charles City, William Acrill, Esquire, and Sam. Harwood, Esquire, for B. 

Harrison, Esquire. 
Charlotte, Paul Carrington and Thomas Read, Esquires. 
Chesterfield, Archibald Cary and Benjamin Watkins, Esquires. 
Culpeper, Henry Field and French Strother, Esquires. 
Cumberland, John Mayo and William Fleming, Esquires. 
Dinwiddie, John Banister and Boiling Starke, Esquires. 
Dunmore, Abraham Bird and John Tipton, Esquires. 
Elizabeth City, Wilson Miles Cary and Henry King, Esquires. 
Essex, Meriwether Smith and James Edmondson, Esquires. 
Fairfax, John West, jun. and George Mason, Esquires. 
Fauquier, Martin Pickett and James Scott, Esquires. 
Frederick, James Wood and Isaac Zane, Esquires. 
Fincastle, Arthur Campbell and William Russell, Esquires. 
Gloucester, Thomas Whiting and Lewis Burwell, Esquires. 
Goochland, John Woodson and Thomas M. Randolph, Esquires. 
Halifax, Nathaniel Terry and Micajah Watkins, Esquires. 
Hampshire, James Mercer and Abraham Hite, Esquires. 



206 APPENDIX. 

Hanover, Patrick Henry and John Syme, Esquires. 

Henrico, Nathaniel Wilkinson and Richard Adams, Esquires. 

James City, Robert C. Nicholas and William Norvell, Esquires. 

Isle of Wight, John S. Wills and Charles Fulgham, Esquires. 

King George, Joseph Jones and William Fitzhugh, Esquires. 

King and Queen, George Brooke and William Lyne, Esquires. 

King William, William Aylett and Richard Squire Taylor, Esquires. 

Lancaster, James Selden and James Gordon, Esquires. 

Loudoun, Francis Peyton and Josias Clapham, Esquires. 

Louisa, George Meriwether and Thomas Johnson, Esquires. 

Lunenburg, David Garland and Lodowick Farmer, Esquires. 

Middlesex, Edmund Berkeley and James Montague, Esquiers. 

Mecklenburg, Joseph Speed and Bennett Goode, Esquires. 

Nansemond, Willis Riddick and and William Cowper, Esquires. 

New Kent, William Clayton and Bartholomew Dandridge, Esquires. 

Norfolk, James Holt and Thomas Newton, Esquires. 

Northumberland, Rodham Kenner and John Cralle, Esquires. ' 

Northampton, Nathaniel L. Savage and George Savage, Esquires. 

Orange, James Madison and William Moore, Esquires. 

Pittsylvania, Benjamin Lankford and Robert Williams, Esquires. 

Prince Edward, William Watts and William Booker, Esquires. 

Prince George, Richard Bland and Peter Poythress, Esquires. 

Princess Anne, William Robinson and John Thoroughgood, Esquires. 

Prince William, Cuthbert Bullitt and Henry Lee, Esquires. 

Richmond, Hudson Muse and Charles McCarty, Esquires. 

Southampton, Edwin Gray and Henry Taylor, Esquires. 

Spottsylvania, MannPage and George Thornton, Esquires. 

Stafford, Thomas Ludwell Lee and William Brent, Esquires. 

Surry, Allen Cocke and Nicholas Faulcon, Esquires. 

Sussex, David Mason and Henry Gee, Esquires. 

Warwick, William Harwood and Richard Cary, Esquires. 

Westmoreland, Richard Lee, Esquire ; Richard Henry Lee, Esquire ; and 

John A. Washington, Esquire.* 
York, Dudley Digges, Esquire ; Thomas Nelson, jr. Esquire ; and William 

Digges, Esquire. 
Jamestown, Champion Travis, Esquire. 

Willtamsburg, Edmund Randolph, Esquire, for George Wythe, Esquire. 
Norfolk Borough, William Roscow Wilson Curie, Esquire. 
College of William and Mary, John Blair, Esquire. 

* John A. Washington was probably the alternate of R. H. Lne. 



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Randolph's Virginia, Reports, G vols. 8vo. sp. $24. 

Gilmer's Virginia Reports, 8vo. cf. $2. 

Leigh's Virginia Reports, 12 vols. 8vo. cf. $-18. 

Grattan's Virginia Reports, 11 vols. 8vo. cf. $44. 

Oases, criminal, etc., by Judges Brockcnbrough and Holmes, new edi- 
tion, with notes, 2 vols, in 1, 8vo. sp. $G. 

Acts of Assembly of Va., various years, 8vo. hf. sh. 75 to $1 25. 

llening and Shepherd's Statutes of Va., 1G vols. 8vo. sp. $13. 

Hening's Lawyer's Guide and American Pleader, 2 vols. 8vo. sp. $8. 

Hall's Digested Index to the Virginia Reports, 2 vols. 8vo. sp. $3. 

Mathews' Guide to Commissioners in Chancery, 8vo. sp. $2 50. 



-J. W. Randolph' 's List of Books. 



Rules of the Court of Appeals of Va., 8vo. pa. 12c. 
Mayo's Magistrate's Guide, 8vo. sp. $3. 
Virginia Laws on Corporations, 8vo. pa. 50c. 
Trial of T. Ritchie, Jr., for killing J. H. Pleasants, 8vo. pa. 25c. 
Justice's Record Book of Judgments, cap, hf. sp. $1 and 1 50. 
Tucker's Lectures on Natural Law and Government, 12mo. mus- 
lin, 75c. 
Tucker's Lectures on Constitutional Law, 12mo. mus. 75c. 
Virginia Pay and Muster Rolls, 2 vols, in 1, 8vo. sp. $15. 
Virginia House of Delegates Journals, various years. 
Journals of Virginia Conventions of 1776, 4to. hf. sp. and 1850, 8vo. 

hf. sp. 2 50. 
Journals and Debates of Virginia Convention of 1829-30, 8vo. cf. $2. 
Debates in Virginia Convention of 1788, 8vo. sp. $5. 
Virginia Debates and Resolutions 1798-9, 8vo. hf. cf. 1 50. 
Statistics of Virginia to 1850, 8vo. cf. 2 50. 
Constitution of Virginia, 1851, 8vo. pa. 12c. 

Progress of the United States, with Census of 1850, 4to. mus. $0. 
Statistics of United States Census of 1850, 4to. mus. 1 00. 
Smith's History of Virginia, 2 vols. 8vo. sp. 5 00. 
Smith's News from Virginia, 8vo. pa. 25c. 
Campbell's History of Virginia, 8vo. mus. 1 50. 
Beverley's History of Virginia, new edition, edited by C. Campbell, 

with Plates, 8vo. mus. 2 50. 
Martin and Brockenbrougk's History of Virginia, 8vo. sp. 2 00. 
Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, new edition, with map and plates, and 

new matter nover before printed, 8vo. mus. 2 50. 
Virginia Historical Register, G vols. 8vo. pa. at 1 00. 
Virginia Historical Society Addresses, 8vo. pa. at 25c. 
Jefferson's Memoir, Correspondence and Miscellanies, 4 vols. 8vo. 

boards, 5 00. ■ 
Lee's Remarks on the Writings of Jefferson, 8vo. mus. 1 25. 
Byrd's Westover Manuscripts, 8vo. bds. 1 25. 
Bland's Papers and Memoir, 8vo. hf. sp. 1 25 
Dr. Moorman's Guide to Virginia Springs, 18mo. mus. 1 00. 
Dr. Burke's Guide to Virginia Springs, 12mo. mus. 1 25. 
Dr. Goode's Guide to Virginia Hot Springs, 48mo. pa. 12c. 
Maury's Gulf Stream and Currents of the Sea, 8vo. pa. 25c. 
Smith's View of British Possessions in America, 48mo. sp. 25c. 
Southern Literary Messenger, 20 vols, complete, a handsome set 

bound, 75 00, any year or number supplied. 
Life and Sermons of Rev. Wm. Duval, by Rev. C. Walker, 12mo. 

mus. 1 00. 
Sermons by Rev. J. D. Blair, 8vo. sp. 75c. 
Fletcher's Studies on Slavery, 8vo. sp. 2 00. 
Dew's Essay on Slavery, 8vo. pa. 50c. 
Lays of Ancient Virginia, and other poems, by J. A. Bartley, 12mo. 

mus. 75c. 
Gertrude, a novel, by Judge Tucker, 8vo. pa. 37c. 
Southern and South-Western Sketches, Fun, Sentiment and Adven- 
ture, 12mo. pa. 37c. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. iii 



Uncle Robin in his Cabin in Virginia, and Tom -without one in Boston, 

by J. W. Page, -with plates, second edition 12mo. mus. 1 00. 
Garnett's Lectures on Female Education, 82mo. sp. 50c. 
Vaughan's Speller, Reader and Definer, No. 1, 12mo. sp. back, 18c. 
Vaughan's Speller, Reader and Definer, No. 2, 12mo. sp. bk. 25c. 
Life of the Hon. Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina, 12mo mus. 75c. 
Rogers' Virginia Geological Reports, 8vo. pa. 1 00. 
Winckler's Hints to Piano-Forte Players, 12mo. bds. 25c. 
Laws of Trade, by Charles Ellett, 8vo. mus. 1 50. 
Industrial Resources of the South, 3 vols. 8vo. mus. 6 00. 
Family Receipt Book, 12mo. pa. 25. 
A collection of the Early Voyages to America, by Conway Robinson, 

8vo. mus. 3 00. 
Edgar's Sportsman's Herald and Stud Book, 8vo. sp. 1 50. 
Plantation and Farm Book, Record, Inventory and Account Book, by 

a Southern Planter, 4to. hf. sp. 2 00. 
Ruffin's Farmer's Register, 10 vols. 8vo. hf. sp. 30 00. 
Ruffin's Essay on Agricultural Education, 8vo. pa. 12c. 
Ruffin's Essay on Calcareous Manures, 12mo. mus. 1 25. 
Ruffin's Agricultural Essays and Notes, 12mo. mus. 1 25. 
Ruffin's Agricultural AVorks, 2 vols, library binding, 12mo. 3 00. 
Transactions of Virginia Agricultural Society to .1853, 8vo. pa. 50c. 
Randolph's Pocket Daily Memoranda, 24mo. sp. bk. 37c. 
Cottom's Edition of Eichardson's Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland 

and District of Columbia Almanac, 24mo. pa. Gc. each ; 25c. per 

dozen, or 2 50 per gross. 
Flavel's Balm of the Covenant, View of the Soul of Man, &c, Svo. 

hf. sp. 50c. 
Williams and others on Watcr-Cure and Bathing, 'with notes by J. H. 

Timberlake, 12mo. bds. 50c. 
Dove's Masonic Constitutions, 12mo. mus. 75c. 
Dove's New Masonic Text Book, 12mo. mus. 1 25. 
Dove's Virginia Royal Arch Text Book, 12mo. mus. 1 25. 
Robinson's Description of the Oregon Territory, 8vo. pa. 50c. 
Prose and Verse, by St. Leger L. Carter, 24mo. mus. 50c. 
Com. Elliott's Address to his Early Companion, 8vo. pa. 37c. 
Arator, by John Taylor, of Caroline, 12mo. sp. 1 00. 
Taylor's Constitution Construed, 8vo. hf. sp. 3 00. 
Virginia State Directory, 8vo. bds. 50c. 
Edith Allen, or Sketches of Life in Virginia, by Lawrence Neville, 

12mo. mus. 1 00. 
Laws of Etiquette, 12mo. pa. 12c. 

Self Instructor, or Learning Made Easy, 16mo. pa. 12c. 
Hunnicutt's Doctrine of the Union Baptists, 12mo. pa. 12c. 
Select and Classified Latin Words, 8vo. pa. 25. 

Riego, or the Spanish Martyr, a Tragedy in five Acts, 12mo. pa. 37c. 
Magruder and Orvis' Debate, 12mo. mus. 125. 
Grigsby's Sketch of Virginia Convention, 177G, Svo. mus. 1 25. 



NOW PRINTING. 
Matthews' Digest of the Laws of Virginia, 8vo. sp. 



iv J. W. Randolph's List of Boohs. 



WYTHE'S VIRGINIA REPORTS. 

Decisions of Cases in Virginia, hi/ the High Court of Chan- 
cery, with remarks upon decrees by the Court of Appeals 
reversing some of those decisions, by George Wythe, 
Chancellor of said court. Second and only complete edition. 
With a Memoir of the Author, Analysis of the Cases, and 
an Index, by B. B. Minor, L.B. And with an Appendix, 
containing references to cases in Pari Materia, an Essay on 
Lapse, Joint Tenants and Tenants in Common, &c, &c, by 
Wm. Green, Esq. 8vo. sheep, $4. 

Judge Lomax, in the second edition of his Digest, (vol. 1, p. 613, 
note*,) says: "See, in the Appendix to Minor's edition of Wythe's 
Reports, a most learned and elaborate consideration of the origin, 
and nature, and principles of the doctrine of survivorship in joint- 
tenancy, and the extent to which, unrepealed by the Virginia statutes, 
it remains still applicable in practice, by Wm. Green, Esq., of the 
Virginia Bar." Other notices of the same Appendix occur ibid. 432, 
note 6; 527, note *; 53G, text and note. 

"This Appendix, from the pen of Wm. Green, Esq., of Culpeper, 
contains, among other useful essays, a learned, elaborate, and 
thorough discussion of the subject of foreclosure of mortgages in 
Virginia." — Sands' Suit in Equity, 493. 

Chief Justice Taylou, in Orr's heirs v. Irving's heirs and devisees, 
2 Carolina Law Repositorj 7 , 4G5, delivering the opinion of the court, 
says: "To these [English] cases may be added a decision made by 
the late Chancellor Wythe, in Virginia, which may be cited as equal 
in point of authority, if not superior, to any of the British decisions, 
from the luminous and conclusive reasoning on which that upright 
and truly estimable judge founds it — clarum et venerabile nomen." 

Mr. Wallace, Editor of " The Reporters Chronologically Ar- 
ranged," says, in his third edition of that work, page 346: "A very 
greatly improved edition of Wythe, edited by B. B. Minor, Esq., of 
the Richmond Bar, with a memoir by the editor, and an appendix, 
containing many very learned notes, by Mr. Green, appeared in 1852. 
No American Reporter has ever been so learnedly and carefully 
edited." 

All of the old editions of this work are imperfect, and yet copies 
have been sold at auction as high as $10, such has been the demand 
for it. 



New and only complete edition. 
Published by 



J. W. RANDOLPH. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. 



MATTHEWS' GUIDE. 

A Guide to Commissioners in Chancery, with practical forms 
for the discharge of their duties; adapted to the new Code 
of Virginia, hy James M. Matthews, Attorney at Law, 
author of "Digest of the Laws of Virginia." 8vo. sheep, 

m 50. 

" Mr. Matthews has in this publication furnished a valuable addi- 
tion to the small stock of Virginia Law Hooks. The work is not only 
of essential service to the Commissioner, it is also a valuable vade 
mecurti to the Chancery Lawyer. The following opinion is expressed 
of it by a legal friend: 'I have had occasion to use Mr. Matthews' 
Guide to Commissioners as a book of reference in the course of my 
practice at the bar. I have uniformly found it to be correct, and it 
materially aided me while attending the settlement of accounts before 
the Commissioner.' 

The following table of contents may be acceptable to our legal 
readers in the country : 

Chapter I. Of the origin of Commissioners in Chancery, their ap- 
pointment, the reference of accounts to them, and the proceedings 
thereupon. — Chap. II. Of fiduciaries generally, and the settlement 
of their accounts by Commissioners in Chancery. — Chap. III. Of 
Guardians and Wards. — Chap. IV. Proceedings under decrees and 
orders in the Commissioner's Office, and herein: — Of References and 
Reports ; The examination of parties upon interrogatories ; Admis- 
sions of parties; Of the onus probandi; The examination of witnesses 
upon interrogatories; Enquiries as to heirs-at-law, next of kin, &c. ; 
Production of documents ; Of scandal and impertinence ; Of the 
principles on which accounts of executor or administrator should be 
stated; When interest not to be involved in administration account; 
When account of executor or administrator should be closed; What 
payments not to enter into the general account; When annual rests 
are to be made; Formula in stating account of executor or adminis- 
trator; Principles on which guardians' accounts should be stated 
How to state the account of one who is in name an executor, but is 
in fact a guardian or trustee ; How to ascertain value of life-estate 
or annuity; Table of longevity ; Adjournment by Commissioner; Re- 
port and exceptions: Review of report. — Chap. V. Of surcharge and 
falsification. — Chap. VI. Of notices. — Chap. VII. Of evidence. — 
Chap. VIII. Of means for compelling debtor to discover and surren- 
der his estate. — Chap. IX. Of fees of Commissioner in Chancery. 

Chap. X Of descents and distributions. — Chap. XI. Of the payment 
of debts according to their priority. — Chap. XII. For preventing 
Commission of crimes. 

Every Commissioner should have a copy of this work." 

[Republican. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



vi J. W. Randolph's List of Books. 



KUFFIN'S AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. 

Essay* and Notes on Agriculture. By Edmund Ruffin. 
12uao. muslin. U 25. 

Containing articles on the Theory and Practice of Draining (in all 
its branches) — Advantages of Ploughing Flat Land in Wide Beds — on 
Clover Culture and the Use and Value of the Products — Management 
of Wheat Harvests — Harvesting Corn Fodder — on the manner of pro- 
pagation and habits of the Moth or Weevil, and means to prevent its 
ravages — Inquiry into the causes of the existence of Prairies. Savan- 
nas and Deserts, and the peculiar condition of Soils -which Favor or 
Prevent the Growth of Trees — Depressed condition of Lower Vir- 
gini — Apology for "Book Farmers" — Fallow — Usefulness of Snakes — 
Embanked Tide Marshes and Mill Ponds as Causes of Disease — On 
the Sources of Malaria, or of Autumnal Diseases, and me.ins of pre- 
vention — On the Culture, Uses and Value of the Southern Pea. (Ruf- 
fin's Prize Essay of November, 1854,) and especially as a Manuring 
Crop. 

This volume consists of didactic and principally, also strictly prac- 
tical pieces, in part selected from the Farmer's Register, or still more 
that have either not been published in Virginia or entirely new mat- 
ter, in addition to and extensions of former publication, and the re- 
cent Prize Essay on the Pea Culture, &c. 

"The essays of no man of this day in Virginia, upon the subject 
of Agriculture, can command the attention that will be paid to those 
from the pen of the venerable farmer, Ednrand Ruffin; a man whose 
Ion"' experience, whose close observation and incessant efforts to im- 
prove the system of Agriculture, have placed him at the head of that 
noble profession — Tiller of the Soil." — Richmond Dispatch. 

'■In a country like ours, the pursuits of Agriculture are the foun- 
dation of prosperity, and their improvement is connected with every 
step of its advancement. Its study is, therefore, of prime importance, 
and every contributor is a benefactor. It is one of the blessings of 
the age, that this department of industry has commenced a new epoch, 
from the applications of science and the systematized results of obser- 
vation and experience. For this latter class of improvements, Mr. 
Ruffin stands pre-eminent. He is deeply and enthusiastically versed 
in all the questions of practical farming, and with a generosity which 
entitles him to the highest credit, gives the benefit of his enlightened 
views to the world. The volume, before us, comprises his most ma- 
tured convictions on a variety of agricultural topics of acknowledged 
importance to all who cultivate the soil. It is a treasury of that kind 
of information of which thousands in the country stand in need, and 
for want of which their actual labor does not receive half of its re- 
ward. Buy Mr. Ruffin's book, gentlemen, and the earth herself will 
return the compliment with a smile." — Quarterly Review. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. 



RUFFIN ON MANURES. 

An Essay on Calcareous Manures, by Edmund Ruffin a 
practical Farmer of Virginia from 1812; Founder and sole 
Editor of the Farmers' Register ; Member and secretary 
of the former State Board of Agriculture ; formerly Agri- 
cultural Surveyor of tbe State of South Carolina; and pres- 
ident of the Virginia State Agricultural Society. Fifth 
edition, amended and enlarged. Fine edition, 8vo., printed 
on good paper, and strongly bound, library style, $2 ; cheap 
edition, 12mo., muslin, % 1 25. 

A large proportion of this publication consists of new matter not 
embraced in the preceding editions. The new additions or amend- 
ments serve to present all the new and important lights on the gen- 
eral subject of the work, derived from the author's later observation 
of facts, personal experience, and reasoning founded on these prem- 
ises. By such new additions the present edition is increased more 
than one-third in size, notwithstanding the exclusion of much of the 
least important matter of the preceding edition, and of all portions 
before included, that were not deemed essential to the argument, and 
necessary to the utility of the work. 

Prof. Johnson, of London, author of "Agricultural Chemistry," 
"Chemistry of Common Life," and many other valuable Works, 
speaking of the influence of man upon the productions of the Soil 
and the application of Marl to worn-out Lands, says, "for examples 
of both the results, see Essay on Calcareous Manures, by Edmund 
Ruffin, the publication of which in Virginia, marks an epoch in the 
Agricultural history of the Slave States of North America." 

"Mr. Ruffin with an ingenuity, an energy and a logic, which be- 
long only to the order of great intellects, has demonstrated, both by 
analysis and synthesis, the disease and the cure; the disease, the 
want of Carbonate of Lime in our soils, and their consequent acidity 
and sterility ; the cure, the application of this necessary element of 
all good lands, in the form of marl, which is generally diffused 
throughout the tide-water section of this State and the adjacant 
States." — Richmond Whig. 

The Southern Planter says : "We commend it to every fai'mer in 
the State. To the tide-water farmers it is a necessary of agricultu- 
ral life." 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH, 

Richmond Va. 



viii J. W. Randolph's List of Boohs. 



PLANTATION BOOK. 

Plantation and Farm Instruction, Regulation, Record, Inven- 
tory and Account Book, for the use of Managers of Estates 
and for the better ordering and management of plantation 
and farm business in every particular. By a Southern 
Planter. ''Order is Heaven's first law." 4to. hf. roan, $2. 

This Book is by one of the best and most systematic farmers in 
Virginia, and experienced farmers have expressed the opinion that 
those who use it will save hundreds of dollars. 

" This is a most admirable work, one which every planter and far- 
mer should not only possess, but carry out its objects and aims, both 
in the letter and in the spirit, for they all tend to the introduction of 
system in the managment of landed estates. The Book purports to 
have been gotten up as a guide to overseers and managers; but is so 
filled, so arranged, that the proprietors of such estates would them- 
selves be equally benefited by personally carrying out its numerous 
plans, hints and suggestions; for after carefully looking through and 
studying its details, we most conscientiously say, that they are 
founded in wisdom, and, if practiced upon, would be promotive alike 
of economy and humanity — economy in the management of the farm 
or plantation — and humanity in providing for the comfort and health 
of slaves, as well as stock. 

It contains a chapter explanatory of the manager's duty — shows 
how his journal or daily record should be kept. Upon this head, as 
well as upon the employment and treatment of negroes and manage- 
ment of the plantation, the remarks are alike copious and judicious ; 
so also are those upon the manner in which the stock of all kinds are 
to be cared for. Its observations upon the saving and application of 
manure, the cultivation of the plantation or farm, as well as upon 
the proper rotation of crops, are sensible, and show an acquaintance 
with the several subjects on the part of the author. The tables, illus- 
trative of the three, four and five field system of rotation, are full of 
instruction, and may be studied with decided advantage. 

It also contains many useful 'tables,' showing the number of spaces 
contained in an acre of land at various given distances, which will 
be found useful in fixing the proper distances to place marl, lime or 
other manure, so as to give any desired quantity to the acre," &c. 
Besides which, there are ruled blanks for recording all the details of 
farm and plantation duties, from the beginning to the end of the 
year, so arranged as to make the labor so plain and easy, that if 
anything can induce farmers and planters to record the operations of 
their estates, this work will lure them to it. That it may find a 
ready sale we most fervently wish, as it is pregnant with much 
good." — American Farmer. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. ix 



JEFFERSON'S NOTES. 

Notes on ike State of Virginia. By Thomas Jefferson. 
Illustrated with a Map of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware 
and Pennsylvania. A New Edition, prepared by the Au- 
thor, containing many Notes and Plates never before pub- 
lished. 8vo. muslin, $2 50. 

It is printed from President Jefferson's Copy (Stockdale's London 
edition of 1787) of the Notes on Virginia, with his last additions 
(they are numerous) and corrections in manuscript, and four maps oi" 
Caves, Mounds, Fortifications, &c. 

Letters from Gen. Dearborn and Judge Gibson, relating to the Mur- 
der of Logan, &c. 

Fry and Jefferson's Map of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Penn- 
sylvania — very valuable on account of the Public Places and Private 
Residences, which are not to be found on any other map. 

A Topographical Analysis of Virginia, for 1790 — a curious and use- 
ful ^heet for historical reference. 

Translations of all Jefferson's Notes in Foreign Languages, by Prof 
Scheie de Vere, of the University of Virginia. 

"The recent publication of Mr. Jefferson's well known and interest- 
ing Notes on the State of Virginia, renders a special and most accepta- 
ble service. The work, which was nearly out of print, has been 
enriched with the manuscript notes of the illustrious author; and 
where these have been quoted from foreign languages, they have been 
translated in the Appendix by the learned Prof. Scheie de Vere. It 
is unnecessary to praise a book which has always been highly 
esteemed." — Richmond Examiner. 

"As the production of one of our most eminent statesmen and 
writers, abounding in profound thoughts and philosophical deductions, 
it will ever be deemed an indispensable volume in a well chosen 
library." — Religious Herald. 

"A new edition of the famous work has just been published. The 
paper, print and binding are all in excellent taste, and do credit 
to Mr. R. This edition has the advantage of the author's last notes 
and emendations, and has been carried through the press with great 
care and caution, by a gentleman every way equal to the task, who 
is, moreover, a near relative of the author. Every Virginian who 
wishes to know as much as possible about his own State, will of course 
buy it, for Mr. Jefferson was by many degrees the best Virginian anti- 
quary that has yet been known to the public." — Richmond Dispatch. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



J. W. Randolph 's List of Books. 



BEVERLEY'S VIRGINIA. 

The History of Virginia, in four parts. I. The history of 
the settlement of Virginia, and the government thereof, to 
the year 1706. II. The natural productions and conve- 
niences of the country, suited to trade and improvement. 
III. The native Indians, their religion, laws and customs, 
in war and peace. IV. The present state of the country, 
as to the polity of the government, and the improvements 
of the land, to 10th of June, 1720. By IIobert Bever- 
ley, a native of the place. Reprinted from the author's 
second revised London edition of 1792, with an introduc- 
tion by Chas. Campbell, author of the " Colonial History 
of Virginia." 8vo. muslin, $2 50. 

" Mr. Randolph deserves the thanks of the people of Virginia for 
rescuing her early literature from the oblivion into which it is so 
rapidly falling. His recent re-publication of Jefferson's Notes, with 
the author's latest autograph corrections, was not more gratifying to 
the Virginia scholar and statesman, than the re-publication of this 
rare volume — as precious in Virginia history as any genuine old 
painting of Raphael or Rembrandt in Art — will prove to the Virginia 
historian and student. Beverley is the very best authority of all 
early Virginia writers upon the particular subjects delineated in his 
quaint and agreeable pages; and his work affords the most vivid, 
comprehensive, instructive and entertaining picture of Virginia at 
the date of his writing that is to be found. The reprint is illustrated 
precisely after the manner of the original, by engravings executed in 
lithograph with remarkable truthfulness and beauty. The typo- 
graphical execution of the book is very chaste and neat. We are 
sure that no Virginia gentleman of taste and learning will fail to add 
so valuable a volume to his library." — Richmond Examiner. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



MARTIN AND BROCKENBROUGH'S VIRGINIA. 

A Comprehensive Description of Virginia and the District of Columbia, 
containing a copious collection of Geographical, Statistical, Political, 
Commercial, Religious, Moral and Miscellaneous information, chiefly 
from original sources, by Joseph Martin; to which is added A His- 
tory of Virginia, from its first settlement to the year 1754, with an 
abstract of the principal events from that period to the Independence 
of Virginia, by W. H. Brockenbrough, fonnerty Librarian at the 
University of Virginia, and afterwards Judge of the United States 
Court in Florida. 8vo. sheep, $2. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. xi 



VIRGINIA DEBATES OE 1798. 

The Virginia Report of 1799—1800, touching the Alien and 
Sedition Laws, together with the Virginia Resolutions of 
December 21, 1798, the debate and proceedings thereon in 
the House of Delegates of Virginia, and several other doc- 
uments illustrative of the Report and Resolutions. New 
edition. 8vo. half calf, §1 50. 

"We have received a neat and well printed copy of the 'Virginia 
Report on the Resolutions of '98-99, concerning; the Alien and Sedi- 
tion Laws.' We were struck with the truth of the remark of the 
editor of the first mentioned volume, that this 'report had been more 
praised than read.' Every statesman should be familiar with its 
contents. It is certainly a valuable commentary on the Federal Con- 
stitution, and both parties may find here some of the strongest argu- 
ments in support of their several theories." — Richmond Republican. 



Published by 



J. W. RANDOLPH. 



DEW ON SLAVERY. 

An Essay on Slavery, by Thomas R. Dew, late President of 
William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va. Second 
edition. 8vo. paper, 50c. 

" This Essay has peculiar claims to the attention of the Virginian, 
and is not wanting in interest to the statesman every where. We do 
not think we err in saying, that it is the clearest and ablest defence 
of the institution to be found in the English language. The writer 
views that institution in its historical and its scriptural aspects, and 
discusses at large the plans for the abolition of negro slavery. While 
we cannot accord with all the views he has expressed in regard to 
the colonization movement, we yet think the facts he arrays, and the 
principles lie urges, are entitled to the gravest consideration, as the 
results of unwearied labor, and of a mind well balanced and well 
trained. We believe that all parties are agreed as to the evil of 
emancipation, without removal. The painting of the scenes which 
would ensue such an event, is drawn with a master hand. — Republican. 

Published b} r 

J. W. RANDOLPH. 



xii J. W. Randolph's List of Books. 



GUIDE TO THE SPRINGS. 

The Virginia Springs. Containing an account of all the 
Principal Mineral Springs in Virginia, with remarks on the 
nature and medical applicability of each. By J. J. Moor- 
man, M.D. Second edition, greatly enlarged, with a synopsis 
and maps of the routes and distances, and plates. Also, an 
appendix, containing an account of the natural curiosities of 
the State. 18mo. muslin, $1. 

"Visitors to the Springs, for health or relaxation, will find it 
greatly to their advantage to procure such a valuable vade mecum as 
this; and those who, like ourselves, remain at home, can also appre- 
ciate tin work, if they can appreciate anything which bears upon 
Physical Geography in its combination with the healing art. The 
work is gotten up in capital style, and the public may be assured that 
it is no catch-penny production." — Watchman and Observer. 

"The work contains much valuable information to persons in search 
either of health or pleasure, presented in an agreeable shape. The 
more celebrated of the watering places are lithographed, and maps 
of the various routes and localities furnished.' - — Lynchburg Virginian. 

"The author of this publication was for many years resident physi- 
cian at the White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, and from his knowledge 
and experience of the mineral qualities of the various springs in that 
region, is amply qualified to give a correct description and accurate 
analysis of their several waters. This is an admirable directory for 
the use of visitors and invalids who resort, during the summer sea- 
son, to the invigorating and healthful waters of the Virginia moun- 
tains." — Journal of Useful Knowledge. 

"Every person visiting the Virginia Springs should be supplied 
witli this little volume." — Fredericksburg Democratic Recorder. 

"It is just such a book as the public have needed much for some 
time, and supplies a desideratum which is every year becoming more 

necessary Dr. Moorman's book is written in an agreeable 

style, and his long and intimate experience at the Springs making 
him thoroughly acquainted with the subject he treats, renders it 
valuable to the searcher after health." — Cotton Plant. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



SOUTHERN SCHOOL BOOKS. 

Vaugliaris Spellers, Definers and Headers. 
First Book, for beginners, 19c. 
Second Book, for more advanced pupils, 25c. 

Published by J. W. RANDOLPH. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. xlii 



CITY MISSIONARY. 

The Memoir and Sermons of the Rev. William Duval, City 
Missionary. By the Rev. C. Walker, with a portrait. 
12rno. muslin, $1. 

" We noticed the Memoir of the Rev. Mr. Duval, at the time of its 
publication, but we are induced again to refer to it, from the inter- 
est which a more careful perusal than we are generally able to give 
to the favors of publishing houses, has afforded us. We had feared, 
upon first opening it, that it might prove one of those common-place, 
stereotyped religious eulogies, with which the world is so often bored, 
when good men die, and with which the shades of the good men 
themselves, if they are aware of what is going on in their old haunts. 
must be purgatorially afflicted. But having glanced at a few chap- 
ters in this memoir of young Mr. Duval, and having known the man, 
we were tempted to read farther, and found in the simple and unam- 
bitious record of a simple and unambitious life, and in the extracts* 
from the diary of the subject of the memoir, a delineation of char- 
acter which is well culculated to awaken more interest in the mind 
than the most eloquent formal eulogy." — Richmond Dispatch. 

"For the subject of this memoir we entertained a high personal 
regard — esteeming him a zealous and faithful herald of the cross. 
His connection was with the Episcopal church ; and at one time he 
was the Editor of a Temperance paper in this city. He had been in 
the Ministry only a few years when called to his rest; but these were 
years of unceasing activity. As to the mechanical execution of the 
work, we can say it is well done, and when we say well done, we mean, 
as well as similar works arc usually gotten up at the North." 

[ Watchman and Observer. 

"Wm. Duval, one of the most efficient, as well as devoted among 
the younger clergy of our own day, graduated at the Alexandria The- 
ological Seminary in 1845 In the beginning of 1849, he died, 

in the full assurance of Christian hope, and the fruition of Chris- 
tian exertion. And if his life teaches no other lesson, it teaches 
this: the immense influence which even four years entire devotion to 
the Christian cause can bring to bear. In point of literary merit, 
the biography with which Mr. Walker has presented us, stands very 
high, both for grace of style, for loveliness of spirit, and for discrim- 
ination of thought/' — Episcopal Recorder. 

"The subject of this Memoir was a most excellent man, a devoted 
self-sacrificing christian and an ardent and zealous philanthropist. 
The records of a life, such as are here related of Mr. Duval, cannot 
fail to be interesting to every one who has a sympathy for the poor 
and the frailties which are often attendant upon poverty.'' 

[ Charlottesville Jeffersonian. 
Published by 

J. W. RANDOLPH. 



xiv J. W. Mandotyh's List of Books. 



SCHOOLER'S GEOMETRY. 

Elements of Descriptive Geometry. — The Point, the Straight 
Line and the Plane — Samuel Schooler, M. A., instructor in 
Mathematics at Hanover Academy, Va. 4to. hf. roan, $2. 

The Taper, Type and Plates are in the finest style of the arts, and 
the book altogether has been pronounced equal if not superior to any 
English, French or American work on the subject. 

From Albert E. Church, M. A. Professor of Mathematics in the 
U. S. Military Academy, West Point : 

" My Dear Sir: — I have examined your work with great interest 
and pleasure. The detailed explanations of all the elementary 
principles of this usefal branch of mathematics are so lucid, and the 
illustrations so beautiful and correctly drawn, that, with this book in 
his hand, I do not see that any pupil familiar with the elements of 
Geometry, can find difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the funda- 
mental principles of Descriptive Geometry. The work does you 
groat credit, and I trust that you will find sufficient encouragement 
in its success, to carry out your design of publishing further on the 
subject. I admire much the manner in which the plates are gotten 
up, and have seen no work in which the printing of figures on a black 
ground has been so successful." 

From Lieut. M. F. Maury, Superintendent of the National Observa- 
tory, Washington : 

" Dear Sir: — Pray accept my thanks for the copy of your work on 
Descriptive Geometry. I am glad to see you are moving in this di- 
rection with school books, and congratulate you heartily. I hope 
you will meet with the encouragement, and your work with the 
success which it deserves ; for all your demonstrations, as far as. 
from a hasty examination one can judge, are neat, clear and mathe- 
matical." 

From Wm. B. PiOGERS. LL. D., late Professor of Natural Philos- 
ophy in the University of Virginia : 

" My Dear Sir : — Yours is the .first original publication of a sys- 
tematic kind, on any mathematical subject, which has yet emanated 
from Virginia, and I take pride in the thought that its author is an 
alumnus of the University, and one of my own esteemed pupils. It 
is no common merit, to have pursued with ardor the difficult mathe- 
matical studies in which you were initiated at the University, and to 
have thus early shown the fruits, not only of enlarged reading, but 
of original thought upon such subjects. From what I have seen of 
your work, I am much pleased with its clearness and conciseness of 
.statement and demonstration, and I think that it must prove a valua- 
ble text for students." 

Published by J. W. KANDOLPH. 



121 Main Street, Richmond, Va. xv 



UNCLE ROBIN. 

Uncle Robin in his Cabin in Virginia, and Tom without one 
in Boston. By J. W. Page. Second edition, with plates. 
12rno. muslin, $1 00. 

"Its object appears to be to disprove statements made in Northern 
romance?, touching the evils of Slavery, as well as to show that what- 
ever ills attend the life of a Southern Negro, their ills are produced 
by the imprudent sympathy of self-styled philanthropists like Garri- 
son, Pillsbury, vYbby Kelly, and Bcecher Stowe. We have examined 
the volume but cursorily, and are inclined to think it well worth a 
perusal. It is written in a plain, substantial style, and with an earn- 
estness, though in the shape of a colloquy among the characters 
introduced, which is strongly marked." — Church's Bizarre, Phila. 

"The author is a pious and intelligent layman of the Church of 
Virginia, who, for many years has sustained the relation of master 
with Christian fidelity and benevolence. His opportunities of observ- 
ing the actual condition of slaves in Virginia, have extended through 
a long life and over a large portion of the State. The book is called 
fortb, as many similar productions have been, by that clever, but 
false and pernicious work, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Unlike some others, 
however, it presents the subject with great calmness and moderation, 
presenting slavery as it is known really to exist in the Southern 
States. Its evils, and even its horrors, are faithfully portrayed ; 
whilst the institution is successfully defended against the calumnious 
reproaches with which Northern abolitionists have assailed it. Tbe 
principal negro characters are such as we occasionally meet with 
among slaves, whilst the diversity of conduct on the part of masters, 
faithfully and truly represent that much vilified class of Southern 
men. The style of the book is very modest and unpretending, and 
perhaps would suffer under the criticism of a severe reviewer. It is, 
nevertheless, neat and perspicuous, conveying much sound argument 
and truthful history." — Soxithem Churchman. 

"I have looked over Mr. Page's book lately. It is an excellent 
little work. Too much cannot be said of its true and correct picture 
of the slave holders of Virginia. The design and influence of such a 
book are good; and it is worthy a place on every book-shelf in the 
Stats. The appetite of the age seems to require something marvel- 
lous and exciting, not to say a vivid and indelicate exhibition of 
crime, and books of an opposite character seem flat and stale. But 
1 trust a new era has commenced, when wholesome truth will be 
received in place of the highly spiced and inflammatory nonsense 
which has for years poured like a flood upon us." — Winchester Virg. 

Published by 

J. W. RANDOLPH. 



A QUARTERLY LAW JOURNAL. 



Edited by A. B. GUIGON, of the Richmond Bar. 

Contributors: — Wm. Green, of Culpeper; Judge J. W. Brocicen- 
brough, of Lexington; Prof. J. B. Minor, University of Virginia ; 
W. T. Joynes, author of "Essay on Limitations;" J. M. Matthews, 
author of "Guide to Commissioners in Chancery," and "Digest of 
the Laws of Alrginia; " A. H. Sands, author of " History of Suit in 
Equity," and other professional gentlemen of well-known ability and 
learning, have agreed to contribute to the columns of the Journal. 

The undersigned will commence, on the 1st of January, 185G, the 
publication of a Law Journal. 

It is designed to furnish reports of decisions made by the Federal 
Courts held in this City — by the District and Circuit Courts of the 
State, and reports of decisions made by the Special Court of Appeals, 
and by the Supreme Court of v^ppeals in cases of interest and impor- 
tance. The earlier numbers will contain also a complete digested 
index of the reports of Grattau. Tate's Index of the cases decided 
in the Court of Appeals of Va., reaches the 2d volume of Grattan, 
and since that time nine volumes have already been published, which 
the lawyer must burrow through when searching for any of the decis- 
ions contained in them. This supplement to Tate's Analytical Index 
will relieve the professional man of this labor, and this part of the 
contents of the Journal will be so printed and paged that it may be 
bound up in a separate form. 

Each number of the Journal will contain a chapter or more of the 
Revisors' Reports, with their notes, and such alterations of the Code 
of Va. as have been made by statutory enactments since the year 1849. 
This companion to the Code will also bo so paged and printed that it 
may be bound up uniform with the Code. The importance of these 
Reports is well known by members of the profession who have had 
occasion to consult them, as shedding light upon the provisions of 
the Code. 

There will be occasionally introduced forms, of utility to practi- 
tioners, Clerks of Courts, Conveyancers and others. 

For the rest, the Journal will contain the usual matter of such pub- 
lications: — the latest reports of new and important decisions in other 
States, (especially the Southern and Western.) essays on interesting 
legal subjects, and occasional biographies of those distinguished 
members of the bar, now deceased, who, in their day and generation, 
won for it merited distinction and honor, and whose memories, cul- 
pably neglected by their descendants, live only in tradition. 

The work will be published quarterly, on good white paper, each 
number containing over 125 pages, 8vo. 

All who are disposed to favor this enterprise, will please forward 
their names immediately. 

New books, when forwarded to the Publisher, will be noticed ac- 
cording to their merits. 

Terms — $5 per year; six copies for $25. Liberal commission 
allowed to all who will act as agents. 

Published by -/~ Q J. W. RANDOLPH. 

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